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BULLETIN OF THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 
Vol. XVII May 1. 1916 



No. 9 



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HUMANISTIC STUDIES 

Vol. II, No. 1 



ORIENTAL DICTION AND THEME 
IN ENGLISH VERSE, 1740-1840 

BY 

EDNA OSBORNE, A. M. 
Fellow-elect in English, The University of Kansas 




LAWRENCE, MAY, 1916 



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Oriental Diction and Theme in English Verse, 1740-1840 ,by Edna Osborne 

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J. 



ORIENTAL DICTION AND THEME 
IN ENGLISH VERSE, 1740-1840 

p, .rr-.-.y. EDNA OSBORNE, A. M. 

Fellow-elect in English, The University of Kansas 



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rUBLISHED BY THE UNIVERSITY 



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PREFACE 

The writer's interest in Orientalism in English literature began 
at the University of Illinois in 1911, when Professor H. G. Paul, in 
a lecture on the Romantic poets, emphasized Byron's Oriental 
coloring and suggested that its study would make a good thesis. A 
little later this interest took form in a master's thesis on The 
Orientalism of Byron, which was accepted by the English Depart- 
ment of the University of Kansas in 1914. This preliminary study 
opened up a field which seemed boundless, and which offered very 
attractive appeals to the student of foreign influences on English 
literature. 

One does not need to be acquainted with Oriental languages or 
Oriental literature to trace with some profit the effects of Oriental 
interests on English verse and prose. It has been impossible to 
examine all the English verse from 1740 to 1840; but the chief 
poets have been reviewed with a good deal of care, and many of 
the minor ones. The Oriental drama offers a field by itself, and 
only a few dramas have been included in the present survey. It is 
hoped that all the main characteristics of Oriental diction and 
theme in the period have been recognized and given some attention 
in this paper. There has been no effort at a microscopic examina- 
tion, at inclusion of every possible poet, passage, or term. It is 
hoped and presumed that such values as the present study yields 
will prove sound in and for themselves. 

The writer wishes to thank Dr. C. G. Dunlap, Head of the Eng- 
lish Department, and Miss Carrie Watson, University Librarian, 
and her assistants for courtesies extended; and also Dr. E. D, 
Cressman, of the Latin Department, for assistance in matters 
relating directly to Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit. To Professor 
S. L. Whitcomb, the editor of this series of Studies, the writer 
is especially grateful for constant assistance during the past year 
— assistance as generous as it was helpful. Without it this paper 
could hardly have been brought to completion at the present 
time. 

Edna Osborne. 
The University of Kansas, 
June 28. 1916. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I 
Introduction: Orientalism in English Verse 7 

Chapter II 
Oriental Vocabulary 21 

Chapter III 
Oriental Phrase and Figure 31 

Chapter IV 
Oriental Passage and Poem 43 

Chapter V 
The East and the West 56 

Chapter VI 
The Orient Itself 69 

Chapter VII 
Poetic Values in English Orientalism 83 

Appendix 

I. Bibliographical Notes. 

A. Poems and Passages 93 

B. Collections of Poems 129 

C. General Bibliographical Notes 130 

II. Notes on the Oriental Vocabulary. 

A. Oriental Vocabulary in Sir William Jones 134 

B. English Words of Oriental Derivation 136 

C. Oriental Vocabulary in the King James Version 

of the Bible 138 

Index 139 



Oriental Diction and Theme in 
English Verse, 1740-1840 

CHAPTER I 

Introduction: Orientalism in English Verse 

This study aims to present within brief compass the general 
character of the Oriental diction and the Oriental theme in English 
verse between 1740 and 1840. 

Every noteworthy fashion, manner, or school in the history of 
English poetry has a vocabulary and a phrasing that are char- 
acteristic and leveal something of the spirit beyond the words, 
Pastoralism is not njerely a matter of certain themes and certain 
moods, but, almost of necessity, of certain verbal tendencies. 
One who reviews the Oriental poetry of England for the century 
after the publication of Collin's Eclogues soon becomes familiar 
with a characteristic diction and its relation to mental and moral 
states. In some Oriental poems there is little Oriental quality in 
the diction; the Orientalism may be confined chiefly to the setting, 
to a character or characters, or to a general thenie. On the other 
hand, there are i)assages and poems whose exotic character is 
mainly in the hmguage. The ideal poem is one which expresses 
Eastern life or Eastern feeling in Orientalized diction. 

In the present study, the term "Orientalism" is somewhat 
broadly interpreted. It includes, first, the presentation of life in 
the Orient and of Oriental objects, ideas, or persons in the West; 
second, the treatment of any theme in a style Oriental or supposed 
to be Oriental. The first interpretation covers the Englishman in 
India as well as the native, and the gypsy and the elephant in 
England as well as in their original homes. The second type of 
Orientalism would, in a lax application of the idea, be found in all 
poems of a peculiarly rich, luxurious, and figurative fancy and 



8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

decorative style. This second conception, however, is too vague 
to furnish a safe guidance in such a study as this. There is too 
much in common between Orientalism so interpreted and the 
neo-Italianate manner so much in vogue during the latter part of 
our period! The emphasis must be laid upon the first interpre- 
tation, which is logically more distinct and historically more 
tangible. 

"The Orient" in this paper includes not only all of Asia and all 
of Africa, with the neighboring islands, but Russia, Poland, Lap- 
land, Zembla, Bohemia, Turkey in Europe, and some of the 
Balkan states. Literary criticism usually recognizes a certain 
Asiatic element in Russian literature, and the racial character or 
the political history of the other countries mentioned allies them, 
to a certain degree at least, with the Orient. Mohammedan 
Africa is certainly Oriental so far as the English poets of our 
period are concerned . Partly as a manner of convenience and part- 
ly in recognition of the poetic treatment it receives — often very 
similar in general tone to that given to Arabia or Persia — all the 
rest of the continent may be included. Even the negro in America 
may appear and does sometimes appear as a genuine Oriental 
subject. Spain in itself does not belong to the world of Eastern 
poetry, but many of the poems of the period dealing with Spain 
are concerned largely with the Moors or with the relations of the 
Spaniard to the Moor. 

Martha Pike Conant has faced the problem of separating the 
Hebraic element from the Oriental for critical purposes.^ The 
distinction often seems somewhat arbitrary. One remembers 
Carlyle's interpretation of the Book of Job — Biblical at least if 
not fully Hebraic—- in the "Hero as Prophet". The King James 
version of the Bible contains many words which belong to the 
Oriental vocabulary of English poetry .^ Furthermore, our poets 
often take a character, a subject, or a situation from the Bible and 
elaborate and expand it in Oriental instead of strictly Biblical 
fashion. It seems sound criticism to call Byron's Destruction of 
Sennacherib an Oriental poem though it is one of the Hebrew 
Melodies; Wells' Joseph and His Brethren has passages of marked 
Oriental quality. In The Christian Year there are a few poems. 



1. The Oriental Tale in England, p. XVI. 

2. See Appendix, II, C. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 9 

theoretically on Biblical subjects, decidedly akin to the general 
Oriental tone of the period. 

A conception of Oriental diction may be based on that of Orient- 
alism as just given. Not all words of Oriental derivation, however, 
belong to the poetical vocabulary. "Algebra", "zero", and other 
scientific terms from the Orient do not belong to English Oriental 
style. "Check", though derived from the Persian, is surely less 
akin to the Oriental vocabulary of English poetry than "glitter- 
ing", which happens to be of Scandinavian origin. Such are the 
complications in the relations of language and feeling in English 
Orientalism. Much of the general subject belongs to the philolo- 
gist, rather than to the historian of style. 

So little has been done in the field of Orientalism in English 
verse, that a brief historical survey may not be amiss. 

There is no Orientalism in Beowulf; but it is a long path from 
Beoivulf to Kipling. Prior to Chaucer, in the verse romances and 
in the medieval drama, many terms of Oriental place and person 
are introduced. Mohammedanism, the Crusades, and pilgrimage 
to the Holy Land are favorite topics. Herod, in the Coventry 
Shearmen and Taylors, declares that the "whole Orent ys under 
myn obbeydeance". He swears several times "Be Mahownd", 
and compares his own "triumphant fame" to that of "most 
myght Mahownd". In the same play there is what might by 
courtesy be called a brief Oriental passage. The angel is sent to 
the— 

"Kyng of Tawrus, Sir Jespar, 
Kyng of Arraby, Sir Balthasar, 
Melchor, Kyng of Aginare. " 

In the Play of the Sacrament, the merchant has traveled quite 
extensively in the Orient, as has Jonathan the Jew. The real 
business of the latter is to be converted by a miracle. Before 
conversion, he prays to "Almighty Machoniet", and thanks him 
for his gifts. The list of these treasures resembles many an 
Oriental passage in later poetry, and includes "gold, silver, and 
precious stones" — amethysts, emeralds, sapphires, rubies, pearls, 
etc.; spices "both great and small" — ginger, licorice, pomegranate, 
pepper, cloves; and other Eastern products — rice, almonds, dates, 
and figs. 

There are no strictly Oriental poems in Chaucer, unless we con- 



10 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

sider the Man of Laiv's Tale and the Prioress's Tale as such. 
Chaucer, however, mentions a number of Oriental countries and 
products, and he speaks of Eastern idols, magic, and sorcery. 
His Oriental diction is distinct, if not very extensive, including 
such words as carbuncle, crystal, date-tree, figs, nutmegs, peacock, 
ruby, spicery, etc. In both Chaucer and The Pearl there is ref- 
erence to the "Fenyx of Arraby ". The third and fourth lines of 
this poem are: 

"Oute of Oryent, I hardyly saye, 
Ne proued I neuer her precios pere. " 

The Fall of Constantinople in 1453 probably had some effect on 
the English interest in the Orient, as well as on the general progiess 
of humanism in Europe. The relation of Spain to England in the 
Tudor period has been ably considered by Dr. Underhill.^ No 
great body of Orientalized English verse, however, resulted from 
these influences. Yet from Surrey to Milton, that is in the Eliza- 
bethan period in the broadest possible interpretation. Orientalism 
in diction and theme is a richer and more varied subject tlian in 
earlier English literature. 

The early English secular drama shows many traces of Oriental 
influence, though few or no plays strictly Oriental. Cambises may 
perhaps be called the first Oriental drama in England, though 
aside from its setting and, in diction, a few proper names, it has 
little Eastern quality. The word "elephant" is about all to 
represent Oriental diction in Roister Doister. In Gorhoduc, the 
theme of English descent from a Trojan is of course really classical, 
in source and significance. In The Fuure PP, the pardoner has on 
exhibition an "ej^e-toth of the Great Turke", the palmer has of 
course been in the Holy Eand, and the apothecary's store includes 
a few Eastern drugs, one being "cassy" — said to be the oldest 
drug known to medicine. 

The Orientalism in Shakespeare is somwhat diffuse or uncertain 
in tone, Oberon is from "the farthest steppe of India, " and there 
are many brief references here and there to the Turks, Ethiopians, 
Tartars, the Nile, etc. The Moor appears in Titus Andronicus as 
well as in Othello. 

Antony and (leopatra has not only an Oriental setting, but, in 



3. Spanish Literature in the Envland of the Tudors. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 11 

spite of its general Roman character as a play, passages of true 
Eastern character. In Dacid and Bethsabe and in Cotnpaspe the 
coloring in part is clearly of the Oriental type. But it is in Tani- 
burlaine that we find a true and extensive treatment of Oriental 
themes expressed in Oriental diction; so far, at least, as certain 
motifs — luxury, tyranny, excess — are concerned. In this play is 
much that suggests the general character of the later Oriental 
drama in England. 

Surrey's Sardanapalus is a good early example of an English 
subject Orientalized; and is an introduction to an Eastern character 
destined to receive more extended consideration in English poetry. 
Several pages at least could be given to the Oriental element in 
Spenser. It is rich in diction and fairly so in theme; but is noAvhere 
concentrated into an Oriental poem or extended passage. An 
examination of Dr. Bradshaw's Concordance shows a liberal use 
of Oriental diction in Milton. Professor Beers quotes a number of 
phrases from Milton to prove that he "had more of the East in 
his imagination than any of his successors".^ 

Before the publication of Paradise Lost, the Siege of Rhodes and 
the first work of Waller had appeared, and English poetry was 
treading the path toward pseudo-classicism. The Siege of Rhodes 
is the forerunner of a long line of plays set in the Orient and having 
at least some Eastern characters and some Eastern language, if 
little of true Oriental coloring. Many of the scenes in the heroic 
tragedies are laid in Asia, Africa, or the Mohammedan regions of 
Europe. This was an easy task, as it was to include a considerable 
number of names for the characters smacking at least of something 
non-English. A few striking foreign customs or objects — such as 
the Chinese Wall — were also easy of access; but few playwrights 
attempted to escape entirely their home training and mode of 
thought. "Fancy you have two hours in Turkey been", directs 
the epilogue of The Conspiracy. Through The Mourning Bride 
and The Siege of Damascus this type of drama flourishes, till in 
Zara it almost reaches the opening of our period, and in Miller's 
Mahomet actually passes into the period. 

Waller's Orientalism consists mainly of a number of poems 
dealing with the political and military activity of the Turk'^, and 
of a sprinkling of such Oriental terms as Moor, Persian, Soldan, 



4. History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Ccntunj, p. 45. 



12 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Bassa, the East, and such conventional phrases as Cross and 
Crescent, Arabia's spices, Afric's shore, "from India to the frozen 
north", etc. In Pope we have the same general tradition, more 
liberally represented however. Dr. H. S. Canby has written a 
paper on Congreve as a Romanticist.^ A study could be made of 
the pseudo-Oriental element in Pope, but that phase of his work, 
like some others, lies mainly on the surface. Lines 93-118 in The 
Temple of Fame might be considered an Oriental i)assage; and here 
and there in his verse there is the use of Oriental diction for effects 
of glittering sensuous richness. 

All studies of English verse between 1740 and 1840 must recog- 
nize the gradual waning of the pseudo-classical taste and the grad- 
ual triumph of its successors — by whatever name we call them. 
Orientalism, as a stylistic manner of English poetry, is either 
pseudo-classical or romantic. It, like pastoralism, made its 
appeal to the old-fashioned among the English poets, and to the 
innovators, when they arrived on the scene. The history of Eng- 
lish poetry proves that the Orient was capable of making a deeper, 
more emotional or more imaginative effect on English poets than 
it made on Waller or Pope. The present study should indicate, 
without a strenuous effort, the shifting of values between the 
middle of the Eighteenth Century and the opening of the Victorian 
Era. The old died hard. There are traces of the conventional 
early Eighteenth Century manner even in Shelley and Keats; 
even in Coleridge and Wordsworth. ^ 

The exact date with which our period opens is chosen as a matter 
of convenience. There is of course no absolute break in the con- 
tinuity of English Orientalism between The Fair Circassian 
(1720) and Lady Montagu's residence in Turkey (1718) and the 
poems of Sir William Jones. Already in Croxall we have a con- 
scious use of Orientalism in opposition to the "dry and insipid 
stuff" of the pseudo-classicists. His phrase "a whole piece of rich 
glowing scarlet" sounds very much like Jones and some of the 
other later Orientalists.^ These items of chronology may, however, 
be worth noting: 



5. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. New Series, 
Vol. XXIV; I, pp. 1-23. 

6. For the significance of Croxall, see Gosse. p. 138; Phelps, p. 30, and Beers, 
Eighteenth Century, p. 84. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme IS 

1742. Collins: Persian Eclogues. 

1744. The death of Pope. 

1746. The birth of Sir William Jones. 

1763. Lady Montagu's Letters published. 

At the close of our period we are at the threshold of the Victorian 
period. This study includes the work of a number of poets who 
lived and wrote after 1840; but is concerned only with their earlier 
verse. It omits Tennyson, Browning, and Bulwer Lytton, as on 
the whole to be considered Victorians. There are probably no new 
Oriental "notes", of importance, so far as poetry is concerned, 
between Byron and Sohrab and Rusium (1853). 

The pseudo-classical phases of Oriental verse are essentially the 
same from Pope to Byron. These include the practical, didactic 
treatment of Eastern life; the satirical manner, and especially a 
purely literary, stylistic interest — imitative, and characterized by 
conventional ideas and diction which present few signs of im- 
aginative and emotional processes. The satirical manner of Byron 
is not notably different from that of Butler or Pope; the didacti- 
cism of Southey, at its worst, resembles that of Young or Johnson; 
Mangan's fiction of translation from Oriental sources follows the 
model of Collins. Crabbe's heroic couplets, in his Oriental pas- 
sages as elsewhere, are not suggestive of any great renovation in 
English versification. If Byron wrote from personal observation 
in the Orient, so did Lady Montagu. Moore was far less of an Ori- 
entalist than Sir William Jones, though the former embodied more 
of his knowledge of the East in verse than did the latter. In the 
Oriental verse of both Moore and Southey, the reader feels a 
certain artificiality, a striving for effect, as in much of the work of 
the Augustans. In both poets the results of carefully selected 
themes, of extended literary preparation, of laborious composition, 
are all too much in evidence. 

Yet much in the Orientalism of our period is allied with the new 
spirit. As a phase of the Romantic Movement, Orientalism devel- 
oped, no doubt by more faltering stages, and with less extensive 
results, side by side with the new Gothic and Celtic tastes, and in 
association with sentimentalism, with the humanitarian and rev- 
olutionary spirit. It has far less kinship with the "return to 
nature", as Romanticism understood it, or with that medievalism 
which Professor Beers chooses to select as the central conception 
in his studies of English Romanticism. Above all, in its deepest 



H University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

poetic significance, Orientalism represents that craving for free 
range of the imagination, that craving to escape the local, the 
practical, the "regular", that at times almost terrible appetite for 
the unknown and the limitless, which Paul Elmer More rebukes 
so firmly in his Drift of Romanticism. The hostility of the classicist 
to Oriental art itself is apparent in such a critic as John Foster, 
loving the simple.^ Of the general strangeness of the Orient to 
the English mind, of the general ignorance of that mind as to 
Eastern life — excei)t its picturesque surface — there are many 
records in English prose during the latter part of our period. It 
was, in jmrt, just this strangeness, just this sense of the unknown 
and the unmeasured, that attracted many of the poets. To some 
of them, as Orientalists, one might venture to ai)ply an expression 
in one of Keble's lyrics — 

"Thy tranced yet open gaze 
Fixed on the desert haze."* 

In our period the word "Gothic" (often capitalized) occurs with 
more frequency than "Oriental". So far as simple phrases go, the 
relation of the two tastes is rather neatly indicated by these 
citations. Eloyd places in an English garden a 'temple, Gothic 
or Chinese'. Armstrong actually carries the Germanic word into 
the regions of the East. He writes that the "cheerless Tanais" 
flows through a "Gothic solitude".^ Both the Orient and the 
(xothic North were adapted to produce certain emotional or sen- 
sational effects of remoteness and wildness; both were rich in the 
evidences of the decay of human achievements. The ruins of the 
temples of the East and of the castles of the North were both ruins ; 
both registered the frailty of the conventional pride and purpose 
of man. Both, under easy conditions, could satisfy the romantic 
craving for silence and solitude. 

As to the Celtic taste, only the lighter element in Eastern 
mythology harmonized with it. But this lighter element was 
present — in the peris and houris, in the milder characters among 
the genii. The more grim elements could be neglected at the will 
of the poet. Something of that charming wilfulness of feminine 
nature, of that irresponsible caprice and sudden change in narra- 

7. See his review of Oriental Scenery; and his other essays listed in the Appen- 
dix. I, C, 2. 

8. The Christian Year; Second Sunday after Easter. 

9. The Art of Preserving llmlth: II. 11. 364-5. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 15 

tion, of that delicate charm in lyric expression which are asso- 
ciated with Celtic genius, are found at times in English Oriental 
verse. This may be said without reference to the possible remote 
historical kinship of Celtic and Oriental poetry. 

As to Occidentalism, the following pages will note more than one 
connection of this interest — comparatively new- in the Romantic 
period, and given large attention — with the taste for matters 
Eastward. Many a poet's fancy travelled indifferently, in the 
phrase of Keats, "Or in Orient or in West". Both regions were 
generously open to fresh, untrammelled poetic treatment. Both 
gave abundant oj)portunity to introduce novel words, strange 
stories, and characters far more nearly 'elemental men' than the 
average residents of London. Burns actually bade fare\\ell to his 
friends, ready for Jamaica, but he also wrote one poem imagining 
himself in India. Moore, Campbell, Mrs. Hemans, and many 
other poets wrote at some length on both East and West. With 
both regions, as time passed, the practical relations of England 
became so pressing, the information of Englishmen became so 
much larger concerning both, that it became difficult to summon 
the old motifs of the wild and intangible. Today it would be 
almost impossible for an English poet to dream in the early Nine- 
teenth Century romantic manner of the St. Lawrence and the 
American 'Forest Sanctuary'; almost impossible, probably, to 
think of the Ganges and the Euj^hrates as streams of fancy 
unfettered by prosaic facts. 

Sentimental ism may perhaps lurk in Arabian and Persian poetry. 
However that may be, the English sentimental taste — not destroyed 
by any number of parodies, or by resolute opponents among the 
playwrights — found something to satisfy it in Orientalized verse. 
Persia and even Africa became pastoral countries, companions if 
not rivals of Sicily and Arcadia. Sentimentality is one of the 
varied notes in Sir William Jones himself. If "earth's melancholy 
ma])" lay open to the sombre imagination of Edward Young, Mrs. 
Hemans found it possible to carry the sentiments of a sensitive 
nature into many of the remote regions of the globe, including the 
East. There are many sentimental passages in The Bride of 
Ahydos as well as in Lalla Rookh. Long before these works were 
published Collins had written, in the preface of the first edition of 
the Eclogues^ that "our geniuses are as much too cold for the enter- 



16 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

tainment of such [Eastern] sentiments, as our climate is for their 
fruits and spices". 

Perhaps the deepest interpretation of the Orient, in the verse of 
our period, was made by EngUsh poets moved by the varying 
humanitarian, reform, and revolutionary interests of the day. 
There are a host of poems on African slavery written, most of 
them, from the point of view of the social reformer. The con- 
templation of the tyrannies of the East aroused vigorous protest; 
the enslavement of Eastern peoples to cruel or superstitious cus- 
toms and creeds — such at least to English thought — called forth 
severe criticism, and praises of the mission of England in the East, 
in politics and religion. The dominion of the proud Turk in 
Greece, while it cost the life of only one English poet, excited 
poetical protests from many pens. In Lalla Rookh even, the 
struggle for liberty is one of the themes, and Smollett looked with 
admiration upon the Arabs and the Tartars as peoples conspicuous 
for their love of freedom. Though the "brotherhood of man", in 
a Twentieth Century sense, is hardly in evidence, many of the 
English poets spoke against tyranny in any form, and showed at 
least poetic sympathy with the oppressed sons of man, in the East 
as well as in the West. In the decline of great Eastern tyrannies, 
they often found a direct lesson for Europe. Ozymandias has its 
sermon. The Orient is more than once called as a witness against 
French pride. Shakespeare and Marlowe felt a certain enthusi- 
asm for the tyrant, provided he was sufficiently great and successful 
in his tyranny; but the times changed — after the English poets 
had known Napoleon. 

After our period, many of the traditions of Orientalism are car- 
ried on with little essential change into the Victorian and post-Vic- 
torian eras. Different poets continued to express different phases 
of this large subject. 

Mathew Arnold felt the fatalism of the East. This conception, 
together with local color which he obtained from Sir John Mal- 
colm's History of Persia, he wove into Sohrab and Rustum. But 
Southey also dealt with the fatalistic element in the thought of the 
East. Edwin Arnold gave sympathetic interpretation of the 
religions of the Orient in The Light of the World and The Light of 
Asia — though, perhaps, in no more scholarly manner than Sir 
William Jones. It might be interesting to compare the diction 
and the themes in two such different poems as Sohrab and Rustum 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 17 

and The Light of Asia. In general tone the latter bears some 
resemblance to the Oriental poetry of Emerson and not a little to 
that of Southey. Elaborate and modern as it is, it can hardly be 
said to mark a new departure in the same degree as do the poems 
of Browning and Kipling. Sohrab and Rustum is one of the noblest 
Oriental poems in English literature. The central theme, certainly, 
is not peculiar to the Orient, nor are the mental and moral tones 
of the poem. The spirit of the poem is largely Greek. Sohrab and 
Rustum is one example of that mingling of varied and even oppos- 
ing styles which is so characteristic of English poetry. The 
settings of the poem, however, general and specific, are Eastern; 
the Oriental diction is adequate and of memorable quality. In 
beauty and depth this poem is superior to most English Oriental 
poems, earlier or later. 

Browning brings into Oriental poetry a more manly humanity, 
a more generous, deeper morality than most of his English fellow 
poets. Miss Conant has discussed the moral tale of the Eighteenth 
Century and all students know the didactic emphasis of that 
period; but Browning's didacticism, as well as his optimism, 
belongs to himself alone. He was much interested, along with 
other masters, in the ethics, the wisdom, the mysticism, the 
religion, and the hot-headed emotions of the Oriental peoples. 
These themes and others he expressed with dramatic force and with 
his usual psychological insight in many poems — Ferishtah's Fancies, 
Ben Karshook''s Wisdom, The Epistle of Karshish, Rabbi ben Ezra, 
A Death in the Desert, Luria, The Return of^the Druses, Solomon 
and BalJcis, Through the Metidja, and others. In Mideykeh the 
vigor of such phrases as "the thvmderous heels" and "Buheyseh 
is mad with hope" are in striking contrast with the languorous 
tone of much Eighteenth Century Oriental verse. The Russian 
element, in whatsoever form, rarely appears in the verse of the 
English Romantic Movement. Ivan Ivanovitch is one of the first 
important embodiments of an interest wliich develops through the 
remainder of the Nineteenth Century and into the Twentieth. 
Clive is almost an authority on its subject. 

Tennyson's Orientalism is considerable, but it is less forceful and 
less original than that of Browning. It is mainly, if not entirely, 
in the Romantic manner. Tennyson reveals a love of Eastern 
story inherited from his boyhood reading and a mature English- 
man's interest in the relations of the Orient to his own country. 



18 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

In his Recollections of the Arabian Nights, he has chosen a theme 
found in several poets of our period. In the Defense of Lvcknow, 
Montenegro, and other poems, he treats that military struggle 
between the East and the West which, in other forms, was an 
important subject in The Siege of Rhodes, in Hoole's translation of 
Jerusalem Delivered, and in many a lesser poem of our period. The 
Cup is his nearest approach to an Oriental drama. In AJchars 
Dream Tennyson shows less of the mystical and phantasmagoric 
quality associated with the Orient than appears in Kubla Khan; 
more of the ethical. 

Fitzgerald is, of course, a figure of great importance in a sketch 
of English Oriental verse. The first edition of his Ruhaiyai appear- 
ed in 1859, the second in 1872, and the third in 1879. The neatness 
and comparative independence of the single quatrain, the concise 
and exotic imagery, the love of happiness and the half -worldly, 
half-mystical philosophy have given the work a wide and an 
enduring popularity. Omar's denunciation of the inexorable fate 
which dooms to slow decay or sudden oblivion all that is charming 
and beautiful in this world resembles the lament of many a poet 
of the Romantic Movement. Much of the Oriental diction in 
Fitzgerald is similiar to that in English verse prior to 1840. The 
naturalism of the Rubaiyat is of a somewhat different type from 
that appearing in the Oriental verse of Byron, Southey, or any of 
their contemporaries. 

In Kipling, it would be no more difficult to find some of the old 
Oriental motifs and language than it would be to trace the English 
ballad traditions in his form and subjects. The Englishman in 
India is not a new theme, nor is that of the heat in the East. What 
affects us in Kipling is the large number of his Oriental poems, his 
extensive realistic and dialectic vocabulary, and the general realism, 
modernism, and anti-academic quality of his work. Though he 
sounds more loudly than his predecessors the note of imperialism, 
it is far from being an absolutely new note in English poetry. Yet 
Kipling, on the whole, is new. Sir William Jones was a scholar; he 
knew East Indian life in ways unknown to Kipling; but he could 
not have expressed the tragic shiver and the mournful music of 
Oriental experience in Danny Deever and Gunga Din, or the humor 
and irony in such poems as Fuzzy-Wuzzy and Oonts. The Dove 
of Dacca relates an old Bengal legend, not in the scholarly manner 
of Sir William Jones or the erudite manner of Southey, but with 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 19 

a touch of Moore's sentimentalism, Route Marchin and many 
other poems are in Kipling's own style, 

The further story of Orientalism in English verse from 1840 to 
the present time is a long one, which cannot even be outlined here. 
It includes many poets, many themes, many moods. James 
Thomson, like Byron and Crabbe and Wordsworth in our period, 
like Tennyson, was influenced by his early reading of Arabian 
Nights. His City of the Dreadful Night in some respects suggests 
the Oriental poems of Southey. Rossetti reverts to the theme of 
ruined grandeur in his stately Burden of Nineveh. Charles Mac- 
kay, a somewhat voluminious poet probably little read in this 
country, tells a legend of Australia in The Lump of Gold, and em- 
bodies the mysticism of the Orient proper in The Prayer of the 
Priest of Isis. He joins his voice to that chorus of singers for 
liberty which is prominent in the period of our study. He writes 
of the abolition of slavery, and in The Brotherhood of Nations 
records of words breathing the spirit of international comrade- 
ship — 

"From the cold Norland to the sunny South — 
From East to West, they warmed the heart of man. " 

Sydney Dobell enters the field of Orientalism in Czar Nicholas and 
A Musing on a Victory. Andrew Lang unites the traditional 
theme of the golden East, the tradition of Ophir, with the modern 
exploitation of the wealth of Africa in his Zimbabwe. Edmund 
Gosse — cosmopolitan in his verse as in his criticism — goes back to 
the Persian sources in his rather long poem on Firdausiin Exile. 
The deeper note in much recent Oriental verse, in contrast with 
much of that examined for this study, may be seen by a comparison 
of Mathilde Blind's sonnet on Nirvana with the brief fragment on 
that theme in Miss Baillie's Bride.^'^ 

In The Madras House of Granville Barker we have a drama par- 
tially Orientalized, with a view of Mohammedanism in striking 
contrast with that in medieval English, Elizabethan, or Eight- 
eenth Century tragedies. 

Orientalism in American literature has a somewhat different 
tendency at present from that in English literature; owing in part 
to our greater distance from Turkey and Persia eastward, and our 



10. Act I, close of Sceae 2, 



W University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

much closer neighborhood to China and Japan westward. In the 
early periods of American literature the conventional themes and 
diction of English Orientalism, like most conventions of English 
literature, are in evidence. Even in Emerson, one finds the old 
phrases — the "mummied East", "Africa's torrid plains", the 
"grave divan"; and his Oriental vocabulary includes many words 
worn by time — "Giaours", "caravan", "Allah", "dervish", 
"crocodile", "siroc", and many others. Yet in Emerson there is 
much language more fresh than these citations indicate; as well as 
an unusual appreciation of the mysticism of the East, — not a 
mere matter of literary fashion, but rooted in the nature of his 
imaginative and religious life. His Oriental poems include The 
Romauy Girl, the Bohemian Hymn, Brahma, (parodied by Andrew 
Lang in a poem of the same name), Saadi, several of the Quatrains 
and most of the Translations. The recent cult of Eastern religions, 
and the vogue of Tagore may be barely mentioned. 

The relations of America to the Orient based on the War of 
1898, on the large number of Orientals in this country, and on our 
present commercial and diplomatic problems, have been more or 
less distinctly recorded in verse or imaginative prose. Such 
dramatic pieces as Madame Butterfly and The Bird of Paradise may 
perhaps be insignificant as literature, but they are nevertheless 
poetic renderings of the modern relations of the East and the West. 
The contrast in ethical and emotional nature between the soul of 
Eastern peoples and the soul of Western peoples appears in both 
these plays. It is an old theme, prominent in the verse and prose 
of England a century ago; but here showing new forms under new 
conditions. In Omar the Tentmaker, the playwright gives careful 
attention to Eastern coloring in the characterization, in the diction, 
and especially in the stage settings. By weaving into the text some 
of the lines of Fitzgerald, the author helps to bind together the 
American Orientalism of today with the English Orientalism of 
the early Victorian period, and so with an interest which may be 
traced back to Chaucer himself. 

What the effect of the present world crisis may be on this special 
phase of English poetry, one does not venture to prophesy. One 
sees today new and startling intermingling of Eastern and W'estern 
life — and death. In the era soon to be, who can tell what new 
themes, what undreamed inspirations of hope or what terrifying 
despair may come to English poets out of the East? 



CHAPTER II 

Oriental Vocabul.\ry 

Between 1740 and 1840 extensive additions were made to the 
English poetic vocabulary. Some critics have considered the 
enriching of language in England and on the continent as one of 
the most important results of the Romantic Movement. English 
poets enlarged the scope of their diction by a revival of medieval 
and Elizabethan terms, and they also went abroad into fairly fresh 
fields. They found new words as well as new ideas and new images 
from Celtic, Scandinavian, Occidental, and Oriental sources. The 
fresh Celtic vocabulary is familiar in Burns, Macpherson, Collins, 
and other poets. A striking Scandinavian diction is found in 
Motherwell, ^^ as well as in his more famous predecessor. Gray. 
Among the poets who introduced geographical or cultural terms, 
new to many of their readers, from the New World are Bowles, 
Grainger, Mrs. Hemans, Thomas Moore, James Montgomery, and 
Southey. Not rarely a poet resorts to two or more of these sources. 
Mrs. Hemans writes The Forest Sanctuary, as well as The Caravan 
in the Desert; the Oriental diction of Lalla Rookh accompanies 
diction drawn from Moore's travel in Canada and the States; 
Southey wrote A Tale of Paraguay as well as The Curse of Kehama. 

In poem after poem of the period these exotic words are of such 
character as to require, or at least receive, explanation in foot- 
notes; sometimes in glossary. The poets did not assume that 
their readers would be familiar with "bigging", "kraken", "'pixie", 
"quaigh", "Torngarsuck", or "sea-grape"; nor with "dallim", 
"kellas", and "Swerga". The scenes of Bowles' Missionary are 
in South America, and the author explains quite a number of 
words used in the text, including, Almagro, Chilian, chrysomel, 
cogul, Guecubu, ichella, opossum, Ulmen, and sea-blossom. 

During our period some few poems Oriental entirely or in part 



11. See his Battle-Flag of Sigurd, Wooing Song of Jarl Egill Skallagrim, and 
other poems. Note also the two Danish Odes "attributed" to John Logan. 

21 



22 University of Kansas Hwnanistic Studies 

were written in Greek or in Latin. Probably the best examples of 
the Oriental poem in Greek are Praed's Pyraviidcs Mgyptiacae and 
In Obitum .... Thomw Fanshawe Middleton. It is interesting to 
note that the latter poem is indebted to The Curse of Kehama, and 
that it presents the theme of the suttee among other Oriental 
subjects. Among the distinctly Oriental lines of In Obitum are, 

"NafidrcDv naze p. HaOuTzAotjTe rdyya\ 
"« ?.uyf)d Ila5d).u)'/(i^ aoAa\ 

and, 

' 0£u NsaAAi'i/fr y'/.ntfiov yafi civ^oc." 

Sir William Jones wrote a number of Oriental poems in Latin. 
From his Elegia Arabica one may select these lines as examples of 
the Eastern tone or theme in the academic tongue: 

"An roseas nudat Leila pudica genas?" 



"Nardus an Hageri, an spirant violaria Meccae, 
Candida odoriferis an venit Azza comis?" 

There are Oriental passages of somewhat didactic quality in John- 
son's Septem JEtates and in Browne's De Aninii Im mortal itate. In 
the first poem is this line: 

"Imperium qua Turca ferox exercet iniquum;" 

and in the second poem this: 

"Aspice quas Ganges interluit Indicus oras." 

The English form of certain geographical words is identical with 
the Latin form, as, for example, in the case of Africa, Byzantium, 
Euphrates, Libya, and Tigris. Occasionally the Latin form is used 
in place of the English, for poetical or metrical purposes. " Nilus " 
is a common substitute for "Nile". 

The extent of the English Oriental vocabulary proper will of 
course depend on the definition of "Oriental". Words derived 
directly or indirectly from Oriental tongues would probably num- 
ber several hundred. Other words, of whatever linguistic origin, 
are naturally and habitually associated with the East. Then 
follows a third class of words, large and indeterminate, borrowed 
from the general vocabulary to express such Oriental motifs as 
luxury, remoteness, etc. A complete study of Oriental style would 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 2S 

consider words of this third chiss as worthy of close attention, 
though it is somewhat difficult to reduce them to law and order. 

There are practically no Avords in the verse of our period appear- 
ing in the characters of Oriental alphabets. ^^ The nearest approach 
to true Eastern word-form is found in transliteration. In the verse 
of Jones there are several hundred transliterations, largely proper 
names, of which only a few have even yet found assured place in 
the standard English dictionaries.'-^ After Jones had established 
the method in English verse (for in some sense he may be said to 
have introduced it), it was followed by later Oriental poets, such 
as John Scott, Byron, Southey, and Mangan. In the following 
twenty lines from Jones' Enchanted Fruit, there are thirteen 
examples of transliteration; "nargal" ("narghile") being the only 
word among them found in the New International Dictionary of 
1910. 

"Here marked we purest basons fraught 
With sacred cream and famed joghrat; 
Nor saw we not rich bowls contain 
The chawla's light nutritious grain. 
Some virgin-like in native pride. 
And some with strong haldea dyed; 
Some tasteful to dull palates made 
If merich lend his fervent aid, 
Or langa shaped like od'rous nails, 
Whose scent o'er groves of spice prevails. 
Or adda breathing gentle heat. 
Or joutery both warm and sweet. 
Supiary next (in pana chewed. 
And catha with strong powers endued, 
Mixed with elachy's glowing seeds, 
Which some remoter climate breeds,) 
Near jeifel sat'% like jeifel framed, 
Though not for equal fragrance named; 
Last, nargal whom all ranks esteem, 
Poured in full cups his dulcet stream." 

A partial list of English words of Oriental derivation is given in 
the Appendix.^* It is clear that many of these do not belong to 
the poetic vocabulary. Others are of rare occurence in the verse 
of our period. Of those that remain, some are very Oriental in 



12. Byrom introduces words in Hebrew characters (in Epistle III to the Rev. 
\fr. L — .),a practice, it will be remembered, of which Browning was rather fond. 

13. See the Appendix , II, A. 

14. See II, B. 



21). University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

suggestive value, while some are of rather indifferent quality in 
this respect. The following table arranges according to source a 
few of the words of genuine Oriental import which are in more or 
less common use in the verse of our period. (In a few examples 
the derivation is problematic.) 

Arabic : alcove — amber — atabal — caliph — fakir — gazelle — 

giraffe — harem — houri — Koran — Mohammedan — minaret — 
monsoon — Moslem — mosque — muezzin — mufti — nabob — 
saffron — Saracen — sheik — simoom — sirocco — sultan — 
tamarind — vizier. 

Avestan : paradise. 

Egyptian : gum, 

Malay : bamboo — lory — proa. 

"Oriental " : peacock. 

Persian : attar — azure — ^bazaar — caravan — caravansary — 

dervish — divan — firman — jackal — jasmine — khan — lemon — 
lilac — Magi — Mogul — musk — orange — pagoda — peri — 
saraband — scarlet — scimitar — shah — tiger. 

Russian : Cossack. 

Sanskrit : avatar — banyan — ^beryl — Brahman — camphor — 
champac — crimson — jungle — rajah — rice — sandal-wood — 
Veda. 

Tatar: horde. 

Turkish : coffee — dey — giaour — Janizary — kiosk — pasha — 
tulip — turban. 

The list in the A'ppendix shows a remarkable preponderance of 
nouns over the other parts of speech. This fact is of interest from 
the poetic as well as the linguistic point of view. Only two verbs 
are given — "chouse" and "garble" — , neither of any poetic value. 
The words which may be considered pure adjectives are only five : 
azure, crimson, saccharine, Sanskrit, and scarlet. Words which 
by the average reader are probably conceived as having some 
adjective quality are more numerous: — bamboo, Bedouin, bril- 
liant, calico, gamboge, Moslem, Mohammedan, mammoth, orange, 
Ottoman, rattan, saffron, shagreen, silk, and Tartar. There 
remain some two hundred and thirty nouns. It is clear that Eng- 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 25 

lish Oriental verse must depend on words from non-Oriental 
sources for its rapid narration, its analysis of psychic process — or 
else omit such matters altogether. 

A brief note on words of Hebrew derivation may not be amiss. 
Skeat gives a list of about eighty-five such words, a list which is 
somewhat altered by the New International. Some of these words 
belong, in the verse of our period, quite as much to the Oriental 
vocabulary as to the Biblical in a narrow sense. Among them may 
be named, balm, balsam^ camel, cassia, cinnamon, ebony, elephant, 
hyssop, sapphire, and teraphim.^"^ There are many other words in 
the King James version of the Bible, of various derivation, which 
belong to the Oriental vocabulary.*^ 

Our Oriental poets paid considerable attention to propriety in 
their diction. Byron distinguishes the Italian form of "giaour" 
from the more Eastern form. Montgomery accompanies the 
phrase "medzin's cry" with a footnote explaining that the proper 
form of the word is "muedhin". Yet the ideal of embodying 
Oriental theme in purely Oriental language was at times curiously 
neglected, and at all times except for brief passages practically 
impossible. One does not find "cromlech" or "Woden" intro- 
duced into an Oriental context; but there are a number of refer- 
ences to a "glen" in Lalla Rookh, and to Bowles the Tartar society 
is composed of "clans". "Glittering" and other words from the 
same Scandinavian root are of frequent service in Jones and his 
followers. The term "pastoral" seems at first reading 
strangely applied to Madagascar (Mickle's Lusiad), or to Gara- 
mant (Shelley). To American readers a "canoe" may probably 
seem a strange boat for the east coast of Africa ; but the etymolog- 
ical authorities tell us the word is probably of African origin. 
"Cacique", however, occasionally found in Oriental context, is 
an importation from the West. 

An interesting example of varied appeal in different words for 
the same object is found in the pseudo-classical "Philomela", the 
English "nightingale", and the Oriental "bulbul". In the early 
j)art of our period, especially, the evidences of pseudo-classical 
diction are all too numerous, and conventional diction of regulation 
Eighteenth Century type blurs the Oriental quality of many a 



15. Southey uses the singular ' 'teraph", in The Curse of Kehama, in strictly 
Oriental context. 

16. See the Appendix, II, C. 



26 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

passage. In the Oriental life of Jones' verse love is a "smart"; in 
this or that passage of other poets we find the '* Armenian knight ", 
the "Syrian dames", and "Asia's fair". 

Among the most common Oriental words in the English verse of 
our period are proper names, geographical and personal. This is 
true in a degree of Persian, Arabian, Turkish, and East Indian 
l)assages, but is especially marked for such outlying regions as 
central Africa, Siberia, and Lapland, whence, at the time in ques- 
tion, comparatively few native words other than proper names had 
entered the English language. The exotic quality in the diction 
of Coleridge's Lapland passage in the Destiny of Nations depends 
mainly on some half dozen strange place-names. Coleridge in this 
respect has made no progress beyond Thomson, who in the north- 
eastern passage in Winter, while relying mainly on geographical 
names, introduced "caravan", "sable", and "reindeer". 

Consultation of mai)s or books of travel is an easy process, and 
not a few poets introduce geographical words rare if found at all 
in the verse of other poets. Among such words are Bojador, Bom- 
bay, Cormandel, Madras, Molucca, Oka, Pekin and Sumatra, in 
Dyer; Bassora," in Collins; Benares and Ki (a river), in Jones; 
Dahomay, in Walter Scott; Beder and Hoangho, in Southey; 
Istakar, Liakura, and Ukraine, in Byron; Carmanian and Choras- 
mian, in Shelley. There are rare words in each of the two passages 
compared just above; in Thomson, Niemi, Tenglio, and Tornea; 
in Coleridge, Balda Zhiok, Lieule-Oaive, Niemi, and Solfar- 
kapper. 

Among the most common words of this class are Arabia, Atlas, 
Africa, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Ethiopia, Euphrates, Ganges, 
Libya, Persia, Russia, Scythia, Tartary, and Tigris. The words in 
the following tabulation are of more or less frequent occurence; 
and are examples from a much longer list that could be given:'* 

Abyssinia Bengal Cairo 

Algiers Bengala Calcutta 

Bactria Bokhara Cashmere 

Bagdad Bosphorus Cathay 

Balbec Byzantium Caucasus 

Barbary Caffraria Ceylon 



17. Found in Emersons Hermione; doubtless in other English poets. 

18. The spelling is often very various, and antiquated, as in the case cl 
"Sahara", and "Tahiti." 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 



21 



Samarcand 

Senegal 

Shiraz 

Siam 

Susa 

Tahiti 

Tibet 

Volga 



Chilminar Lahore 

China Lapland 

Damascus Moscow 

Danube Nineveh 

Fez Nubia 

Golconda Numidia 

Japan Ormus 

Java Sahara 
Kamchatka 

The proper names for persons include those of Oriental gods, of 
historical or legendary characters, and of the dramatis person ae of 
tale, drama, or lyric. If the Gothic revival emphasized such names 
as Woden, Balder and Valkyrie, Oriental taste responded with its 
Allah, Buddha, Brahma, Isis, Osiris, Nealliny, and Vishnu. One 
could readily make a longer reckoning than this from the verse of 
Jones alone. Among the historical or legendary names are Con- 
fucius, Ghengis Khan, Hafiz, Mahomet, Osman, Sadi, Sardanap- 
alus, Semiramis, and Zenobia. The names of contemporary 
celebrities in the East are comparatively rare. Oriental fiction has 
its Leila, Abdallah and Hassan, who take their places beside the 
Daphnis and Chloe of pastoral poetry, and the Laura, Lesbia and 
Delia of love lyrics. It is not often that such a splendid name is 
discovered as that which Shelley gives us in "Ozymandias". 

The word "Orient" itself is not uncommon, but is in less fre- 
quent use than "The East", which occurs in a multitude of 
phrases— "the golden East", "the burning East", "the soft 
luxurious East", "Venice and the East", "the East for riches 
famed", etc. The adjective "Oriental" seems less frequent in 
verse than in prose; and, again, "Eastern" is often a substitute. 
It may be noted in passing that "Occident" and " Occidental" are 
of rather infrequent occurence. If one accepts a liberal interpre- 
tation of "Oriental", one must reckon with "South" as often 
significant of much the same poetic qualities as were associated 
with the Orient proper. In fact the contrast between England 
and Persia or Arabia sometimes takes the form of a 'North and 
South' phrase. There are, of course, more general expressions, 
such as 'Moslem lands', 'paynim countries', etc. 

Special poetic forms for familiar words are frequent. The rather 
bewildering variety in spelling is of slight literary interest, except 



28 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

in cases where the phonetic or rhythmical value of the word is 
essentially altered. So far as literary meaning goes, Bramin, 
Brachman, Brahmin, and Brahman may probably be considered 
identical. The exigencies of rhyme, meter or rhythm, or the 
effort to fashion poetic diction, however, produce some interesting 
variants. Thus one finds Afric, Bengala, Bombaya, Buddh, 
Byzance, Bazantion, Calicut, Ganga, and, very frequently, Ind. 

Words created by English poets after Oriental models are not of 
great significance. "Ozymandias" — if the word is a product of 
Shelley's imagination — may be taken as perhaps the best of its 
class. Many another proper name is coined, due attention being 
given to certain characteristic consonants. Search in the verse of 
Blake would probably discover some Orientalized words used for 
the purposes of the mystic. For humorous effects, one may note 
the "Crocodilople " of Southey, and the long list of *'outlandish" 
Russian names in his March to Moscow. Moore passes beyond 
Southey, however, in daring if not in humor, in his burlesque 
Russian word of twenty-eight letters — " Wintztschitstopschin- 
zoudhofl^"!i9 

The compounds found in Oriental verse are of no little interest. 
Some are transliterations; some are fashioned from words of Ori- 
ental derivation; some, of whatever etymology, express a char- 
acteristically Oriental conception, image, or poetic tone. While 
the formation of compounds is no special privilege of the Romantic 
poets, the best examples are probably found in the later poets of 
our period, especially in Byron, Moore, and Shelley. Others, how- 
ever, sometimes of high poetical quality, are scattered through a 
thousand pages of a hundred other poets. Only a few examples, of 
special Oriental value, can be given here: 

AUah-illa-Allah Desert-wearied (Keble) 

Atar-gul Fire-god 

Aullay-horse (Southey) Fur-clad Russ (Cowper) 

Camel-driver Gem-emblazoned (Peacock) 

Citron-dram Hunter-founder (t. e., Nimrod) 

Cobra-di-capel (Shelley) Million-peopled (Shelley) 

Date-season Minaret-crier 

Desert-circle Mosque-like 



19. In The Twopenny Post Bag; Letter V. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme S9 

Mosque-work Seraglio-guard 

Mother-land of all the arts Seven-headed idol 

(of Egypt, Southey) Spice-time 

Mummy-king Sun-idolater 

Musk-wind (Moore, Mangan) Swer-god (Southey) 

Nile-bird Turban-forms 

Prophet-chief (?*. e., Mahomet) Vapor-belted (of the Pyra- 
Razeka-idol (Southey) niids, Shelley) 

River-dragon (?*. e., crocodile) Widow-burning 

Sand-waves Wul-wulleh 

Scymetar-petals (of the lily, Zemzem-well 

Mangan) 

A distinct though slight service of Oriental diction to English 
verse is found in the matter of rhyme. No examples are found in 
the Persian Eclogues, but a half century later this detail of tech- 
nique is quite conspicuous; in The Bride of Abydos, and Lalla 
Rookh, among other poems. In The Bride of Abydos "divan", 
"Carasman", and "Galiongee" are used twice in rhyming posi- 
tion; and fifteen other words, including Oglou, Ottoman, sherbet, 
scimetar, etc., are so used. In Lalla Rookh we find about thirty- 
six Oriental words at the end of the verses; Cashmere, Bendemeer, 
Chilminar, Nile, and Samarcand, each twice, Araby three times, 
Nourmahal seven times. Among the other rhyming words of this 
poem are Amberabad, Candahar, cinnamon, Caliphat, Isfahan, 
Jamshid, Kathay, kiosk, Malay, myrrh, Saracen, Sultana, Shad- 
kiam, Zenana, and ziraleets. Mrs. Hemans rhymes "scimetar" 
with "bear", and with "war". Praed uses "Bengal" some four or 
five times as a rhyming word. 

Many words of this Oriental vocabulary, the vocabulary of the 
"soft, luxuriant East", have a phonetic beauty and delicacy. 
Perhaps none can equal those words of gliding vowels which 
Stevenson discovered and praised in the islands of the South, but 
those word melodies do not belong to the main body of English 
verse. A true poet could scarcely use any of the following words 
without some sense of charm in the mere sound : Araby, Arabia, 
Arabian, azure, cinnabar, Chilminar, cassia, gazelle, Leila, Mala- 
bar, spicy, Siberia. These are chosen from a very considerable 
vocabulary offering similar values. 

On the other hand, for moods more strenuous, there are Oriental 



30 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

words of sufficient consonantal friction — words like a hiss or a 
blow, suggesting spirited action, though they are nouns. With 
such a value, at least to the imaginative reader, appear Caucasus, 
Cossack, Ganges, giaour, Janizary, Juggernaut, muezzin, sheik, 
vizier, and many others. Something of the effect of ferocious 
attack in Motherwell's Ouglous Onslaught, A Turkish Battle Song 
is surely gained by an apt use of Oriental diction — in these lines, 
for example: 

"Tchassan Ouglou is on! 
Tchassan Ouglou is on! 



For the flesh of the Giaour 
Shriek the vultures of heaven. 

Bismillah ! Bismillah ! 

Through the dark strife of Death 
Bursts the gallant Pacha." 

While there was a lively interest in Oriental words on the part of 
many of the poets of our period, it is doubtful if many of them j)aid 
as close attention to root meanings as the English poet is expected 
to pay in the case of classical or native vocabulary. Often the 
ultimate meaning of the words used was probably unknown. 
Jones gives his readers some careful notes on the etymological 
significance of the names of certain Indian deities. Probably some 
poets imaged black eyes when they wrote "houri", and felt the 
effect of the root meaning "poison" when they referred to the 
simoom.2" But it is only a great poet or a great scholar who can 
be trusted to consider words habitually as the records of remote 
experience or fancy in the lives of men; and many of the authors 
of our study were essentially verse writers rather than artists. 



20. The word " juagle"' is an interesting example of wandering from the ancient 
root meaning, which Skeat gives thus: "Skt. jangala, adj. dry, desert". 



CHAPTER III 

Oriental Phraspi and Figure 

For present purposes by "phrase" is meant any simple combi- 
nation of words, coherent when isolated, a line or less in length. 
Even the adjective-noun form indicates much concerning the 
general character of Oriental diction. This paper should prove, 
if proof were needed, that the English Oiiental poets are not mere 
phrasemongers; yet a good deal of the novelty and of the special 
value of the Oriental taste is shown by examination of the simpler 
elements of its language. 

There are many titles clearly Oriental in diction; others give no 
clue to the Eastern quality of the poems. On a Beautiful East- 
Indian, The Moorish Maiden's Vigil, The King of the Crocodiles, 
The Enchanted Fruit; or. The Hindoo Wife, The Caravan in the 
Desert, and many others-^ are in themselves interesting phrases. 
Persian Eclogues is as suggestive as Danish Odes. The Trav- 
eller at the Source of the Nile is almost a poem in itself, as is The 
Wail of the Three Khalendeers. 

The refrain is often found, sometimes with genuine Oriental 
value, sometimes without. It is used by Collins in his third 
Eclogue, in Lalla Rookh, and, late in our period, by Mangan. 
"Karaman" is found as a complete line twenty-three times in 
Mangan's Karamanian Exile. Tendency of the Romantic- 
Movement to favor the refrain is apparent in the verse we are 
studying, though it may perhaps yield no such striking examples 
as the refrains of The Lady of Shalott, Sister Helen — or of Pre- 
Raphaelite poetry in general. Few if any such lines as Tennyson 
repeats in the body of the verse in the Idylls of the King — 

"From the great deep to the great deep he goes". 



"Clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful,"-- 



2 1. See Appendix. I, A. 



32 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

appear in the Oriental poetry. The most dynamic Oriental 
refrains are transliterations, such as Motherwell's "Allah, il 
allah, " and "Bismillah! Bismillah!" 

The purely Oriental phrases, composed of words derived from 
Eastern languages or of strictly Eastern connotation, are not 
numerous, and, from the nature of the English language, they are 
brief. A few examples are Pollok's "Tartar horde", Southey's 
"Moorish horde", Thomson's "horde on horde", Smart's "tur- 
baned Turk", Harte's "Moorish sarabands", and Chatterton's 
"scarlet jasmines". Other examples could be found in personal 
names and in passages of geographical description. 

Geographical phrases are among the most conspicuous. Many 
of them are what may be called "spatial phrases", in which the 
sense of distance is expressed. Such phrases, when of two terms, 
may have both in the Orient, or one in the Orient and the other 
elsewhere. A model for the first class is found in the first verse of 
the Book of Esther — "From India even unto Ethiopia". A simple 
example of the second class is found in the familiar "From China 
to Peru". As most of these geographical phrases are of the same 
general character, not many citations need be given. In a few of 
the following the idea of contrast is expressed. The first example 
is of a familiar type, in which a mere list of geographical units is 
given. 

Blake: China and India and Siberia. 

Burns : From Indus to Savannah. 

Cunningham : From Zembla to the torrid zone. 

Harte: 'Midst Abyssinian flames or Zembla's frost. 

Jenyns : From frozen Lapland to Peru . 

Keats : Or in Orient or in west. 

Langhorne: From Bactria's vales to Britain's shore. 
From Ganges to the golden Thame. 

Ly ttelton : From Atlas to the Pole. 

Mickle's Lusiad : From Calpe's summit to the Caspian shore. 

Peacock: From northern seas to India's coast. 

Pollok : From Persia to the Red Sea Coast. 

PoUok and Wordsworth : From Agra to Lahore. 

Praed: Arabia's sands or Zembla's snows. 

Mrs. Radcliffe: From Lapland's plains to India's steeps. 

Shelley: From the Andes to Atlas. 

Wilkie: From Zembla to the burning zone. 



Osborne: Orientol Diction and Theme S3 

An example of this type with some special interest is found in 
the common 'either Ind', or 'both the Indies'. At times this 
phrase refers undoubtedly to the West Indies and the East Indies, 
but the reference is sometimes obscure. In the following citation 
its strictly Eastern range is clear: 

"Either India next is seen 
With the Ganges stretched between. "-^ 

But Southey writes, 

*'In Eastern and in Occidental Ind." 

In compiling a considerable number of simple phrases in which 
"east" ("East") or "eastern" ("Eastern") is the basal word, one 
perhaps trespasses somewhat on the study of Oriental themes, but 
it seems convenient to consider the matter here. While during, 
our period the word "Gothic" is in frequent service, one questions 
whether it would be as easy to gather as many examples of phrases 
with that word as it was to collect the following. Certainly one 
could read far and wide before as numerous examples as those 
below could be found for phrases with "West", "Western", or 
"Occidental". 

Among the nouns to which "eastern" (or "Eastern") is prefixed 
in our verse are: Arab — bards — beauty — bower — calm — 
caste — clan — diamond — evening — fire — gems — gold — 
grandeur — heart — hunt — isles — jewels — kings — lands — 
legend — Magi — magician — minds — monarchs — moonstone — 
nabobs — Nile — opal — opulence — oppression — pageantry — 
parliament — patriarchs — pearls — pomp — queens — rajah — 
ruby — ruins — satrap — star — story — tales — talisman — 
warfare. Among the phrases with "east" or "East", in addition 
in addition to those previously given, are: the liberal East, the 
wondrous East, the slumberous East, the East wrought by magic, 
the Imperial City of the East, etc. 

There are almost innumerable examples of phrases formed by 
lists of items in the same category — the names of persons, deities, 
flowers, animals, etc. These may be given simply to represent 
the type: 

Byrom: Sophy, Sultan, and Czar. 



22. James Montgomery: A Voiiaye Round Ihe World. 



SJt University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Cawthorn: Of Isis, Ibis, Lotus, Nile. 

Harte: Moloch and Mammon, Chiun, Dagon, Baal. 

Hoole's Orlando Furioso: Moors, Turks, and Tartars. 

Mangan: Guebre, Heathen, Jew and Gentoo. 

Montgomery: Jews, and Turks and Pagans. 

Smollett: Jews, Turks, and Pagans. 
Such series in Oriental verse rarely have the beauty of the list of 
feminine names in The Blessed Damozel; nor have they received, 
in all probability, such severe criticism as Nordau, in Degeneration, 
gave to Rossetti's passage. 

Certain items given above have suggested the imitative and 
conventional element in the phrasing of the Oriental poets. Such 
results are due in part to inheritance of pseudo-classical tenden- 
cies; in part, to the nature of Oriental themes, and particularly to 
their novelty in English verse. A study of conventionalized 
phrase is of value for its indication of the social mind of the era. 
Occasionally an individual poet will write the same phrase several 
times. Milton's "Araby the blest" occurs three times in the ob- 
scure verse of Thompson. Boyse responds with a thrice-used 
" Zembla's icy coast ". There are a number of natural associations 
of ideas or images which lead to association of words in the phrase. 
Thus we often find named together the Cross and the Crescent, 
the Turk and his turban, the rose and the nightingale, the Chaldean 
and the stars, Mahomet and Allah, Zembla and frost, snow, or ice. 
"Harut" and "Marut" are as naturally members of a single 
phrase as Damon and Pythias, or Roland and Oliver. Perhaps no 
better example could be given of a strictly stereotyped phrase than 
"Tyrian dye", though even this is varied to "Tyrian purple". 
One or the other of these last expressions is found in poet after 
poet, minor and major. 

The epithetical phrase proper is also very frequent, and is the 
result of the same influences that shaped the conventional phrase. 
The pseudo-classical facility in phrases of this type is impressed 
on every reader of Waller. To that poet it is natural to say that 
a trumpet is "loud", that a noise is "powerful". Is it Waller or 
one of his followers who is responsible for "watery sea"? Some 
of these epithetical phrases are taken from Greek and Latin poetry 
and have therefore a certain historical dignity. Others are due to 
lack of imagination or imaginative effort on the part of the poet; 
others as clearly give emphasis to certain characteristics in Ori- 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 35 

ental matters which attract the fancy. The Ganges is often 
"sacred", the Nile often "seven-mouthed", sometimes "oozy", 
"slimy", frequently "fertile" or "o'erflowing". To many writers 
the Pyramids are simply "tall" or "old" or even "Egyptian". 
Shelley's fine "vapor-belted" stands out in clear relief. To 
one poet the Danube is "huge", to Campbell, "dark-rolling". 
The crocodile is "armed", or "scaly"; the desert variously "burn- 
ing", "dry", "scorching", "vast", or even "sandy" and "un- 
fruitful". The effect of a rather slight variation — looking almost 
like a printer's error — is seen in the comparison of "wandering 
Arab's tent", and "Arab's wandering tent". 

While the elephant is found in Chaucer, probably the first 
serious efforts of English poets to give it adequate description 
date from our period. In Langhorne this quadruped is "pon- 
derous", in Thomson, "huge", in Jago, "unwieldy", in Shen- 
stone, "tusky". Hoole, in his translation of Jerusalem Delivered, 
fashions a phrase with two of these adjectives and the idea of a 
third — "The huge elephant's unwieldy weight". Epithetical, no 
doubt, but more poetic are the compounds "castle-crowned", and 
" tower-crowned ". Shelley makes a good phrase out of very simple 
elements in the "wise and fearless elephant ".^^ 

A good example of a phrase at once conventional, epithetical, 
and of Oriental etymology, is "Tartar horde". 

What may be called the "formal poetic phrase" has some kin- 
ship with the epithetical phrase, but in characteristic form appears 
in somewhat longer expressions. Such phrases may be lyrical in 
quality, but are perhaps more likely to be epic or merely descrip- 
tive. They are often cheapened by reliance upon such details as 
capitalization and alliteration, and particularly by overuse; but 
at their best add something to the Oriental values of the verse. 
This is particularly true when they are virtualy translations of 
Oriental conceptions: as in Moore's "Apricots, Seed of the Sun", 
or Thomson's "stony girdle of the world", which he explains as an 
English rendering of the Russian "Weliki Camenypoys" — a 
name for the Riphean Mountains. "God and The Prophet", 
"Mahomet is His Prophet" are other examples of phrasing shaped 
in the East. Or the English expression may be credited to some 



23. Shelley is not always above following leas poetic predecessors. His "Scythian 
frost" has no originality : we find "Scythian snows" in Fergusson, and "Scythia's 
snow-clad rocks" in Mickle. 



S6 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

foreign western poet: "Imperial Calicut" occurs several times in 
Mickle's Lusiad. Whatever its origin, "Mountains of the Moon" 
is found several times in the verse of James Montgomery, and is 
once used by Thomson. Sometimes the poet plays variations on 
his linguistic theme, as later Tennyson varied "Holy Grail" with 
"Holy Thing", "Holy Vessel", "Holy Cup", etc. Southey pre- 
sents the Simorg as the "Ancient Simorg", the "Ancient Bird", 
and the "Bird of Ages". 

This formal type of phrase is much more frequent in some poets 
than in others. It is characteristic of the Oriental verse of Southey, 
Moore, and, probably to a less extent, of Byron and Mangan. 
While based in part on pseudo-classical methods, it belongs in 
large part to what might be called pseudo-romanticism. Yet in 
its formal, decorative, frequently figurative qualities, it may often 
be a true sign of Oriental style. Its general type is familiar to any 
reader of the Apocalypse; and it is probably found in all literatures 
of peoples who love ceremony. The values of the following ex- 
amples will be readily perceived: 

Akenside: The Python of the Nile. 

Blair: The mighty troublers of the earth. 

Bowles: The City of the Sun. 

The Chambers of the dead. 
The God of silence. 

Byron: Blest — as the Muezzin's strain from Mecca's wall. 
With Maugrabee and Mamaluke. 

Macaulay : The Palace of the golden stairs. 

The city of the thousand towers. 

Mangan: The Flower of Flowers. 

The Old House with the Ebon Gates (i. e., the earth). 
Scales and Bridge. 
The Shadow of God. 
The Time of the Roses. 

Moore: The Feast of Roses. 
For God and Iran. 
The Isles of Perfume. 
The land of Myrrh. 
The Light of the Harem. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 37 

People of the Rock. 

Prophet of the Veil. 

Province of the Sun. 

The Spirit of Fragrance. 

Yizd's eternal Mansion of the Fire, 

The Moon of Love. 

The Queen of Slaves. 

Southey : Bowers of Paradise. 

Guardian of the Garden. 
Icy Wind of Death. 
Master of the Powerful Ring. 
Prince of the Morning. 
Servant of the Prophet. 
Sorceress of the Silver Locks. 
Spirit of the Sepulchre. 

After reading a thousand such expressions as "Afric's burning 
sands", "the wealth of all the Indies", and "spicy Arabian gales"; 
after familiarity with such prosaic expressions as "late-discovered 
Tibet" and "the long canals of China"; after noting the fre- 
quency of such phrases as those just given; after realizing the 
cheaper phases of the Oriental diction — one is glad to discover 
fresh and vigorous language in this field, whether it takes the form 
of humor, or of genuine individual imagination. There are, to 
use a figure surely appropriate in this connection, not a few oases 
in the "sandy waste". In a mood of distaste for the trite ex- 
pressions, even "flat-nosed China" seems a welcome phrase; and 
one is glad to read of the 

'land of muslin and nankeening, 

the land of slaves and palankeening;' 

glad to try to realize the simple but surely Oriental conception in 
"some tiger-tamer to a nabob", to listen to Mason's "pigmy 
chanticleer of Bantam", or pass into the reception room to greet 
that "Chinese nymph of tears, green tea". Such a phrase as 
"snorting camels" helps one to believe the camel was sometimes 
a real animal to the imagination of the English poet. 

In biverbal phrase or longer, as a matter mainly of diction or 
mainly of imagery, many expressions are found, of more elevated 
type than those just given, which add something to the beauty or 



S8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

dignity of English verse. The Lapland witch is a conventional 
idea, but Wordsworth gives us "Lapland roses", and Shelley the 
simile, "Lovely as a Lapland night". It is Shelley, also, who 
writes "the swart tribes of Garamant and Fez", "the sins of 
Islam", "the million-peopled city vast", "the rose-ensanguined 
ivory". Among the more decorative phrases of Byron are "a 
Koran of illumined dyes", "fragrant beads of amber", "lamp of 
fretted gold", and "Sheeraz' tribute of perfimie". Landor, for 
all his classicism, occasionally falls into the luxuriant style of 
Oriental verse, as in 

"Arabian gold enchased the crystal roof", 
and, 

"Myrrh, nard and cassia from three golden urns". 

The tendency is of course toward such decorative expressions. 
Wordsworthian taste found little to satisfy it in genuine Oriental 
style. Yet there are themes within the wide range of Oriental 
taste that could be expressed with a noble simplicity, and at some- 
what rare intervals were so expressed. Wordsworth himself 
writes the line, 

"Mindful of Him who in the Orient born", 

and Hawker has a similar line — 

"Therefore the Orient is the home of God '. 

Crabbe images Egypt as a "far land of crocodiles and apes", and 
Montgomery notes, simply enough for the nonce, how "terribly 
beautiful the serpent lay ". Cowper has this line in Expostulation : 

"The fervor and the force of Indian skies." 

Beddoes in general is over-ornate and often vague; but he is 
capable of such lines as these, even in Oriental passages: 

"The skull of some old king of Nile. " 



"Under the shadow of a pyramid. " 

One might suppose the thought of the desert would lead to some 
clear, restrained expressions. Perhaps these selections from Rogers, 
Beddoes, Bowles and Keble, in the order named, may be credited 
as such: 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 39 

"Every wild cry of the desert." 
"A spectre of the desert deep." 
"The camel's shadow on the sand." 
"The dry unfathomed deep of sands." 

Peacock is hardly less severe in the line, 

"O'er deserts where the Siroc raves." 

Yet one must return again and again to the more characteristic 
style, as "flowery" as the plain of Zabran and the vale of Aly in 
Collins' fourth Eclogue. Much was written in the prose of our 
period concerning the figurative nature of Eastern style; and this 
nature of course appears in the English Oriental and Orientalized 
verse. In the preface to the 1 772 edition of his poems, Sir William 
Jones asks the reader to "compare the manner of the Asiatic poets 
v\'ith that of the Italians, many of whom have written in the true 
spirit of the Easterns. " In his text he includes a number of son- 
nets and portions of sonnets from Petrarch, in the original and 
translated into English, that the reader may make the comparison 
suggested in the preface. In his essay On the Poetry of the Eastern 
Nations he gives in transliteration an ode of Hafiz, and translates 
it into English thus — according to his statement, "word for word " : 
"O sweet gale, thou bearest the fragrant scent of my beloved; 
thence it is that thou hast this musky odour. Beware! do not 
steal: what hast thou to do with her tresses.'' O rose, what art 
thou, to be compared with her bright face? She is fresh, and thou 
art rough with thorns. O narcissus, what art thou in comj)arison 
of her languishing eye? Her eye is only sleepy, but thou art sick 
and faint. O pine, compared with her graceful stature, what 
honour hast thou in the garden? O wisdom, what wouldst thou 
choose, if to choose were in thy power, in preference to her love? 
O sweet basil, what art thou, to be compared with her fresh cheeks? 
They are perfect musk, but thou art soon withered. O Hafez, thou 
wilt one day attain the object of thy desire, if thou canst but 
support thy pain with i)atience. " This suiely is to some degree 
comparable with the "conceits" of the Elizabethan Muse, in- 
toxicated by the wine of Petrarchism. It also suggests some 
Oriental passages in Byron, and much in the style of Lalla Rookh. 

The Arabians also make many figurative comparisons in their 
poetry. They compare the foreheads of their mistresses to the 



40 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

morning, their locks to the night; their faces to the Sun, the Moon, 
or to blossoms of jasmine; their straight form to a pine-tree or a 
javelin, etc. 

It is natural to expect some attention to this characteristic of 
Eastern poetry in the Oriental poems of Byron and Moore, and 
the reader is not disappointed. Both in the text and in the usual 
footnotes of the period, specific examples are given of the results 
of Arabian or Persian imagination in the form of simile or metaphor. 
This passage in The Giaour, is, according to Byron, an "Oriental 
simile": 

"On her fair cheek's unfading hue 
The young pomegranate's blossoms strew 
Their bloom in blushes ever new. " 

From Moore's annotation of Lalla Rookh we learn that "the two 
black standards borne before the Caliphs of the House of Abbas 
were called, allegorically, the Night and the Shadow". Further, 
that the mandrake is the Devil's candle; that falling stars are the 
firebrands good angels use to drive away the bad; that fingers 
tinted with henna are like the tips of coral branches; that the 
Malays call the tube-rose the "Mistress of the Night", and that 
in their language one word serves for "women" and "flowers". 

Other English poets are perhaps not quite so much inclined to 
follow Eastern style in its figurative aspects. In certain passages, 
either in verse or prose, one occasionally notices a tendency to 
apologize for an over-decorative quality, according to the ancient 
formula of Chaucer in another matter — it was so put down in ' my 
author'. Jeffrey opens his rather elaborate and on the whole 
enthusiastic review of Lalla Rookh'^^ with some approval and some 
disapproval of the general glamour of its style. "The beauteous 
forms, the dazzling splendours, the breathing odours of the East, 
seem at last to have found a kindred j)oet in that green isle of the 
West; whose Genius has long been suspected to be derived from a 
warmer clime, and now wantons and luxuriates in those volup- 
tuous regions, as if it felt that it had at length regained its native 

element There is not, in the volume now before us, a 

simile or description, a name, a trait of history, or allusion of 
romance which belongs to European experience; or does not 
indicate an entire familiarity with the life, the dead nature, and 



24. In the Edinburgh Review, November, 1817. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme If.! 

the learning of the East. Nor are these barbaric ornaments thinly 
scattered to make up a show. They are showered lavishly over all 
the work; and form, perhaps too much, the staple of the poetry — 
and the riches of that which is chiefly distinguished for its richness." 
But the critic adds: "we rather think we speak the sense of most 
readers . . . that the effect of the whole is to mingle a certain 

feeling of disappointment with that of admiration! to 

dazzle, more than to enchant — and, in the end, more frequently 
to startle the fancy, and fatigue the attention, by the constant 
succession of glittering images and high-strained emotions, than 
to maintain a rising interest, or win a growing sympathy, by a less 
profuse or more systematic display of attractions." 

Such unfavorable opinion of the highly colored style of Oriental 
poetry, or of poetry Orientalized in England, did not begin with 
Jeffrey. At the opening of our period Collins wrote, apparently 
with the idea of defense in mind,^^ of the "rich and figurative" 
style of the Arabian and Persian poetry in contrast with the 
"strong and nervous" style of his countrymen. Shortly before 
Jeffrey's review appeared, John Foster had occasion to review a 
translation of the Ramayunar^ He opened his remarks thus: 
"Scarcely so much as a third part of a century has passed away, 
since a large proportion of the wise men of here in Europe were 
found looking, with a devout and almost trembling reverence, 
toward the awful mysteries of Sanscrit literature." The dis- 
appointment of the sturdy soul of Foster when the "mysteries" 
arrived in the form of the translated masterpiece is evident 
throughout his review. He writes of the Ramayuna, it is "a 
formless jumble .... [it] will encounter utter contempt in 
Europe .... The lingo in which these feats are narrated, defies 

all imitation Xn insurmountable obstacle to the popularity 

of this sort of reading in Europe . . . would be the vast number of 
names by which each of the gods or heroes is designated", etc. 

It is well, perhaps, that in most of our Orientalized verse the 
rich coloring is not emphasized, that the sparkling similes and 
metaphors are often a mere passing adornment of some more or 
less simple English conception, in some cases quite practical, even 



25. See the original preface of his Eclogues. Professor Phelps' statement in The 
English Romantic Movemfnt (p. 95) that Collins "apologized" for the florid 
manner of Abdallah of Tauris seems a little too strong. 

26. See his paper on Sanscrit Literature; listed in Appendix, I, C, 2. 



^2 University of Kcuisas Humanistic Studies 

didactic. The following examples may indicate the quality and 
range of such figures. Few poets of our period attained the sim- 
plicity of style found in Sohrab and Rusturtiy but in style Arnold's 
poem is hardly Oriental. 

Blake: "Black as marble of P^gypt. " 

Campbell: "As easily as the Arab reins his steed." 
"That I^pas-tree of power." 
"Sultan of the sky." (For the eagle.) 

Chatterton : "Swift as the elk. " 

Hartley Coleridge: "Keener than the Tartar's arrow." 

Keble: "The tresses of the palm. " 

Lloyd: "In curves and angles twists about 
Like Chinese railing, in and out. " 
(Of the prosody of the Pindaric ode.) 

Montgomery: "Mad as a Libyan wilderness by night 

With all its lions up, in chase or fight." 

Praed: "Swift as . . . the flight of a shaft from Tartar string." 

Procter: "Witching as the nightingale first heard 
Beneath the Arabian heavens." 

"Wild as a creature in the forest born 
That springs on Asian sands." 

Shelley: "A Babylon of crags and aged trees. " 

"Rose like the crest of cobra-di-capel. " 

Southey: "Proud as a Turk at Constantinople." 

Wilson: "... lovely as the western sky 

To the wrapt Persian worshipping the sun. " 

Beddoes shapes a common metaphor into the phrase, "tears of 
crocodile coinage". Another expression of his is " the hieroglyphic 
human soul"; still another, unhappy perhaps but forceful in its 
way, "whole Niles of wine". That he can attain directness and 
simplicity even in his metaphors is shown by this selection : 

all the minutes of my life 

Are sands of a great desert." 



CHAPTER IV 

Oriental Passage and Poem 

Orientalism in English verse appears in the word, the phrase, the 
passage, the poem, and group of poems. In this chapter some 
discussion is given to the last three of these units of structure. 

The passage varies in length from one line to a himdred lines or 
more. As a matter of significance in the history of English poetry, 
Orientalism is concerned in large part with these thousands of 
passages, of varied tone, on varied themes, scattered through the 
most diverse poems by poets of widely difi"erent schools, from 
Chaucer to Kipling. 

As examples of the couplet passage, we may take the following, 
the first from Piaed's Australasia, the second from Newman's 
Solitvde : 

" On thee, on thee I gaze, as Moslems look 
To the blest Islands of their Prophet's Book." 

"By this the Arab's kindling thoughts expand. 
When circling skies inclose the desert sand." 

Occasionally one finds an Oriental stanza as well unified, as 
distinct from the context, as some of the best known stanzas of 
The Fairy Queen or The Castle of Indolence. A few stanzas of this 
type occur in some of the poems of The Christian Year. In William 
Thompson's Hymn to May, the thirteenth stanza is almost a 
poem in itself; if not a poem of very high quality: 

"All as the phenix, in Arabian skies. 
New-burnished from his spicy funeral pyres, 
At large, in roseal undulation, flies; 
His plumage dazzles and the gazer tires; 
Around their king the plumy nations wait. 
Attend his triumph, and augment his state: 
He, towering, claps his wings and wins th 'ethereal 
height." 



44 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Poems which may be called Oriental in their entirety often 
contain passages of heightened Oriental value, either in diction or 
in presentation of sharply defined theme; just as in pastoral poems 
there are frequent passages of pastoralism par excellence. The 
Bride of Miss Baillie, for example, is Oriental as a whole, but the 
Nirvana passage at the close of I, 2, and the palanquin, elephant, 
and monkey passages in the opening of the next scene, stand out 
in rather high relief. 

There are in our period numerous poems of a type which natur- 
ally includes Oriental reference. For convenience we may call 
this type the "world-poem". In poems of this class the poet 
passes from country to country, either for the mere delight of 
wandering, or for the purpose of tracing the history or present 
status of some idea, some social condition, or some phase of nature. 
Without attempting a complete enumeration, the following 
poems of this type or closely allied with it may be named: 

Akenside: The Pleasures of the Imagination. 
Armstrong: The Art of Preserving Health. 
Blair; The Grave. 
Bowles: The Spirit of Discovery by Sea. 

The Spirit of Navigation. 
Campbell: The Pleasures of Hope. 
Cawthorn : The Vanity of Human Enjoyments. 
Coleridge: The Destiny of Nations. 
Dyer: The Fleece. 
Langhorne: Fables of Flora. 
Mallet : The Excursion. 

James Montgomery: A Voyage Round the World. 
Pollok: The Course of Time. 
Rogers: Ode to Superstition. 
Smollett: Ode to Independence. 
Joseph Warton : Fashion : A Satire. 

Ode to Liberty. 
Young: Night Thoughts. 

These all contain Oriental oassages. For present purposes 
Montgomery's poem of imaginary travel is one of the best. It 
opens with the stanza : 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 45 

"Emblem of eternity, 
TJnbeginning, endless sea! 
Let me launch my soul on thee. " 

We first touch earth in Greenland — a favorite country with this 
author; then pass to Labrador, Canada, New England, Pennsyl- 
vania, the West Indies, across South Anterica; to begin the Oriental 
portion of the trip in '*pale Siberia's deserts". 

In one or another poem with the world-view, we find the roll- 
call of great rivers, as in Peacock's Genius of the Thames, of 
famous cities, of lands and of peoples. Probably there are no 
stranger Oriental passages in any English poet than some of those 
in Blake; yet in the first quotation below we have a bare simplicity, 
suggesting some of the American catalogues of Whitman, which 
is in striking contrast with the mysticism of the second passage: 

"France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia, 
Sweden, Turkey, 

Arabia, Palestine, Persia, Hindostan, China, Tar- 
tary, Siberia, 

Egypt, Lybia, Ethiopia, Guinea, Caffraria, Negro- 
land, Morocco, 

Congo, Zaara, Canada, Greenland, Carolina, Mexico, 

Peru, Patagonia, Amazonia, Brazil, — Thirty-two 
Nations. "^ 

"Egypt is the eight steps within, Ethiopia supports 

his pillars, 
Lybia and the Lands unknown are the ascent without: 
Within is Asia and Greece, ornamented with exquisite art; 
Persia and Media are his halls, his inmost hall is 

Great Tartary; 
China and India and Siberia are his temples for 

entertainment. "^** 

A form of simple geographical concept is found in what may be 
called the "compass-passage". It often has obvious affinity with 
the "China to Peru" phrase noticed in Chapter III. "Simple" in 
general, for in Blake, again, the cardinal points of the compass are 
given mystical meaning. 

As suggested by some of the titles given above, this or that poet 
traces poetry, superstition, liberty, commerce, disease or death 

27. Jerusalem, Chapter III (72). 

28. Ibid., Chapter III (58). 



46 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

around the globe, and for all these themes and others the Orient 
offers its contribution. Thus in Fashion: A Satire, Joseph Warton 
selects from the East a curious custom of the Tartar, and of the 
Chinese, and his India is a land, 

" Where sainted Brachmans, sick of life, retire, 
To die spontaneous on the spicy pyre. " 

Such travels of fancy are not new in our period. Jt will be remem- 
bered that Thomson journeys far and wide to find appropriate 
examples of the heat and fructifying power of summer, and the 
storms and desolation of winter; not forgetting to visit the Orient 
in both seasons. 

A special interest attaches to Oriental passages in poems of 
Celtic, Gothic, Occidental, and Biblical quality; largely by way of 
contrast. Brief touches that might be considered Oriental are 
found in Miss Baillie's William Wallace;^^ Hogg, in his poem on 
the same hero, introduces a couplet on the "great Tartar". 
In Montgomery's Greenland we find this passage of unmistakable 
Eastern flavor: 

"Unwearied as the camel, day by day. 
Tracks through unwatered wilds his doleful way. 
Yet in his breast a cherished draught retains, 
To cool the fervid current in his veins. 
While from the sun's meridian realms he brings 
The gold and gems of Ethiopian kings. "^*' 

Miss Baillie's Christopher Columbus contains at least a mention of 
the Moors, while in Rogers' poem on Columbus there is a passage 
of six lines given to the Oriental desert.^^ No more interesting 
example of contrast could be found than this passage from Rogers' 
Human Life, though the poem as a whole is English or vague in 
setting: 

"At night, when all, assembling round the fire. 
Closer and closer draw till they retire, 
A tale is told of India or Japan, 
Of merchants from Golcond or Astracan, 
What time wild Nature revelled unrestrained. 
And Sinbad voyaged and the Caliphs reigned: — 
Of some Norwegian, wliile the icy gale 

29. Strophes .58 and 91. 

30. Canto I. 

31. Canto VIII. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme A7 

Rings in her shrouds and beats her iron sail. 
Among the snowy Alps of Polar seas 
Immovable — forever there to freeze! 
Or some great caravan, from well to well 
Winding as darkness on the desert fell. 
In their long march, such as the Prophet bids, 
To Mecca from the land of Pyramids, 
And in an instant lost — a hollow wave 
Of burning sand their everlasting grave!" 

Whether we include Wells' Joseph and His Brethren among 
Oriental poems or not is a matter of definition. Its source is in 
the Old Testament and its coloring partly Hebraic, but against 
the general background there are several passages of the clearest 
Oriental value; especially the Prologue of Act II, and in I, 3, II, 3 
and III, 3. In III, 3, in the midst of a rich Oriental context we 
have this excellent example of a brief faunal passage : 

"The supple panther and white elephant, 
The hoary lion with his ivory fangs, 
The barred tiger with his savage eye. 
The untamed zebra, beasts from foreign lands," etc. 

Campbell's Gertrude of Wyoming is an interesting poem, showing 
several distinct historical influences. Written largely in Spen- 
serian stanza, with scenes and characters of the new world, and 
'entirely Germanized in style', it is not without its Oriental 
touch, slight though it be. Stanza "24 of Part II closes with the 
lines, 

"And more than the wealth that loads the breeze 
When Coromandel's ships return from Indian seas. " 

It is interesting to remember that the word "Indian" is of frequent 
occurrence in the poem, but outside this passage refers to the red 
man of America. 

Many other examples could be given of Oriental passages in a 
context which gives them a certain strangeness or at least a cer- 
tain relief. Such are the references to the Eastern life, even if 
generally rather prosaic, in Crabbe's realistic, novelistic tales; the 
numerous citation of Oriental standards for the sake of comparing 
English values in Wordsworth's Prelude; and the "parable" of 
Eastern type introduced into Lamb's Wife's Trial to help unravel 
complexities at the end of the story. 

The Oriental passage sometimes serves to jjoint a moral, some- 



1^8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

times to give a bit of strange, foreign qnality to commonjjlace 
characters or situation. It often appears in the form of simile or 
metaphor. As to theme, it varies from a general conception of the 
Orient, or of some large section of it, to very specific subjects. 
The Oriental theme in general is discussed in the two following 
chapters. Among the common subjects of concrete nature are 
the car of Juggernaut, the caravan, the camel, the elephant, the 
rich natural products of the Orient, the hidden sources of the Nile, 
the ruins of Babylon, Palmyra, or other cities, the return of a 
traveller from the East, the tyranny of the Turk, the cold of 
Siberia, the gypsies in England, memories of Arabian Nights, etc. 
We have previously noted the general geographical passage. 
There are, however, several types of passage which may be given 
a further word here. One of these presents the flower theme; 
another the jewel theme. 

A botanical passage in English verse is not necessarily Oriental, 
l)ut in many cases it is partly Orientalized. We find examples in 
Collins' third Eclogue, in Mason's English Garden, in John Scott's 
Ejpistles, and elsewhere. Probably for Oriental if not for poetic 
quality no passage could surpass this from Jones' Enchanted 
Fruit: 

"Light-pinioned gales, to charm the sense, 
Their odorif'rous breath dispense; 
From belas pearl'd, or pointed, bloom. 
And malty rich, they steal perfume: 
There honey-scented singarhar. 
And juhy, like a rising star. 
Strong chempa, darted by camdew, 
And mulsery of paler hue, 
Cayora, which the ranies wear 
In tangles of their silken hair. 
Round babul-flow'rs and gulachein 
Dyed like the shell of beauty's queen, 
Sweet mindy press'd for crimson stains. 
And sacred tulsy pride of plains. 
With sewty, small unblushing rose. 
Their odours mix, their tints disclose." 

The flower passage may be Orientalized; the jewel passage in 
our period is naturally Oriental in general, for obvious reasons. 
The jewels themselves and in many cases their names, came from 
the East. In the Bible there are three distinct passages of this 
type; in Exodus XXVIII, 17-20, Ezekiel XXVIII, 13, and Reve- 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 49 

lations XXI, 19-20. All three passages, though written at long 
intervals, include, besides gold, the beryl, emerald, jasper, sapphire, 
sardius and topaz. In two passages we find amethyst, carbuncle, 
diamond, onyx, and sardonyx; while the following are found in 
only one passage: agate, chalcedony, chrysoprasus, chrysolyte, 
jacinth, and pearls. The jewel passage in Thomson's Summer — 
introduced as evidence of the beneficent power of the sun, 
"Parent of Seasons" — names only the amethyst, diamond, 
emerald, opal, ruby, sapphire, and topaz, but with the descriptions 
given occupies twenty lines. Later passages of this type are found 
in Hoole's translations of Ariosto and Tasso, in Brooke, Crabbe, 
Harte, Procter, Shenstone, and other poets. Harte's passage''^ is 
interesting in this point: for all the jewels — a standard list — except 
the turquoise he gives a Biblical reference; for the jewel named a 
reference to an authority stating that "The true oriental tur- 
quoise comes out of the old rock in the mountains of Piriskua, 
about eighty miles from the town of Moscheda." 

The Oriental poem, as we have seen, may occasionally be written 
in Greek or Latin; but such poems are rare. In length it varies 
from a few lines to epic proportions. Montgomery's Parrot con- 
tains only thirty-three words; his Pelican and Ostrich being slightly 
longer. Jones' To Lady Jones contains less than one hundred 
words. There may perhaps be some epigrams or epitaphs of 
couplet length that could be called Oriental, but they do not seem 
at all frequent; nor do we find the quatrain, later made so famous 
by Fitzgerald, popular in our period. 

Some poems with Oriental title and setting prove to contain a 
very slight element of Oriental diction or real Oriental color. The 
only word which could in any sense be called Oriental in Jones' 
Chinese Ode Paraphrased is "ivory". In the same poet's Song 
from the Persian, "lily", "cypress", and "rose" must serve for 
Eastern terms. There is doubtless conveyed to most readers, 
something of a vaguely "Indian" atmosphere by Shelley's Sere- 
nade. Yet it contains but a single word of genuine Oriental 
quality. That word, though found in other P^nglish poems, is 
habitually associated by many readers, one may imagine, with 
this particular poem. In Kuhla Khan, the per cent of Oriental 
words is two or three; in Mangan's Karamanian Exile, on account 



In Thomas a Ketnpis: A Vision: beginning "The Gold of Ophir." 



50 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

of the repetition of the word "Karaman", the proportion rises to 
some fifteen or sixteen per cent. For much higher proportions than 
this we must go, not to the poem, hut to the phrase or line; at 
most to the brief passage. 

The Orientahsm of our period is not to any remarkable degree 
expressed by novel or characteristic verse forms. A large number 
of the Eastern poems are written in a versification which served 
English poets of various tastes — in heroic couplets, octosyllabics, 
blank verse, Spenserian stanza, ottava rima, and varied lyric 
stanzas, mostly of simple type. As to rhythm, there is some use 
of humorous anapestics, some of niore serious triple movement, 
as in Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib. There seems little or 
nothing so characteristic of this taste as the short lines with rugged 
rhythm and alliterative tendency were characteristic of the 
Gothic taste. 

That is not the whole story of Orientalized verse, however. 
Jones gives us at least one ghazel, in transliteration, not transla- 
tion; and one at least is written by Mangan. Another is found in 
Moore's Twopenny Post Bag, Letter VI.-^^ Jones writes under the 
titles of several of his poems *in the measure of the original', and 
in a few cases rewrites in more regular English verse to bring 
out the difference. To one unacquainted with Eastern prosody, 
there is nothing very distinctive of the Orient in such lines as 

"With cheeks where eternal paradise bloomed, 
Sweet Laili the soul of Kais had consumed. " 

There is something strange, for the period, however, in the ver- 
sification of the Ode of J ami : 

"How sweet the gale of morning breathes! Sweet 
news of my delight he brings: 
News, that the rose will soon approach the tuneful 
bird of night he brings." 

There is perhaps fully as much interest in the rendition of A 
Turkish Ode of Mesihi into paragraphs of poetic prose. Jones, who 
was a translator of Pindar, writes the Hymn to Durga in the form 
of a regular Pindaric ode; and it seems likely that the extensive 
use of this form in the Eighteenth Century had its effect on the 



33. This form is found among the burlesque poems of Thackeray. 



Oshorne: Oriental Diction and Theme 51 

Oriental verse of other poets, including, perhaps, Southey. All 
of the poets after the Lyrical Ballads, with few exceptions, were 
interested in experiments in English verse, and Southey carried 
into the composition of The Curse of Kehama and Thalaba a 
definite purpose to embody his Orientalism in appropriate versi- 
fication. To say the least. Oriental verse from Jones to Mangan 
showed the general tendency to substitute anything and every- 
thing for the conventional heroic couplet. As a detail, the fre- 
quency of the refrain, from Collins' Eclogues to Lalla Rookh may 
be mentioned. 

While Orientalism, so far as noted, produced no sonnet sequences, 
it has given a number of typical and worthy poems in sonnet form. 
One may recall again that the Sardanapalus of Surrey is both a 
sonnet and an Oriental poem. We could not afford to lose from 
our poetry the Crocodile of Beddoes, the Ozymandias of Shelley, 
or the sonnets of Keats and Shelley on the Nile. Simply as poems, 
these, with Kubla Khan, are among the best products of Oriental 
taste during our period. 

The titles of some of our poems are flat or without specific 
Oriental quality. On the other hand, one has only to remember 
Lalla Rookh, The Curse of Kehama, Kubla Khan, Asia, as well as 
among poems of minor fame. Juggernaut, Palmyra, The Caravan 
in the Desert, and a host of others. The Wail of the Three Khalen- 
deers seems as good as Mandalay. If one wishes something in 
lighter vein, he may choose The King of the Crocodiles, from 
Southey; or Fm Going to Bombay, and The Kangaroos: A Fable, 
from Hood. 

The miscellaneous character of the verse forms of Oriental 
poetry is suggestive of the variety in the poetic types themselves. 
The list of these types is long; the roll of forms distinctly Oriental, 
much shorter. We find poetic types ranging from the dirge to the 
epic, and including the love lyric, vers de societi, epithalamium, 
fable, eclogue, ode, ballad, fictitious epistle, allegory, battle song, 
hymn, tale, parody, inscription, serenade, drama, and other forms. 
The proverb, so familiar in Old Testament literature, seems rare, 
even in passages; but Southey opens his Sonnet XI with 

'Beware a speedy friend!' the Arabian said." 

Among the poetic types which seem characteristic of the Orient, 
or at least of the Oriental taste in England, are the fable, the tale. 



52 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

the drama, and the eclogue. The tale has been considered at 
length, for the earlier part of the Eighteenth Century, by Miss 
Conant. A word may be given here to the drama, the eclogue, 
and the translation. The "ballad" and the "ode" are often 
falsely so named in the poetry of the earlier part of our period. 

A complete account of the Oriental drama from 1740 to 1840 
would require a separate paper. The type is as old as the Eliza- 
bethan era, and there are signs of it in the medieval epoch. Ori- 
ental plays of the same general character as those of the Restora- 
tion period continued to be produced in England until the Romantic 
Movement was triumphant. Hughes' Siege of Damascus appeared 
in 1720, Aaron Hill's Zara in 1736. The influence of Voltaire's 
Orientalism is to be traced in Zara and in later plays. Among the 
plays of our own period, we may name Miss Baillie's Bride and 
Constantine Paleologus; Miller's Mahomet the Imposter; Irene; 
Hellas; and Sardana/palus. It is interesting to note some Oriental 
elements in two "oratorios" of the period, both Biblical in subject 
and general treatment — Brooke's Ruth, and Jago's Adam. Many 
plays not entirely Eastern include some Oriental elements. Miss 
Baillie's Martyr has as a prominent character, Orceres, a Parthian ; 
Brown's Barbarossa is Algerian in setting; Coleman's Mountaineers 
is Moorish in part. Wells' Joseph and His Brethren was noted a 
few pages above. For prologues, we may name Wells' again, and 
add Goldsmith's Prologue to Zoheide. This couplet from Young's 
Epistle to Lord Lansdoivne is of interest: 

"Then with a sigh returns our audience home 
From Venice, Egypt, Persia, Greece, or Rome." 

To return for a moment to Constantine Paleologus. The settings 
include Mahomet's camp near Constantinople; the interior of St. 
Sophia; a view of the city in the background, "seen in the dimness 
of cloudy moonlight"; and this — which perhaps has a slight sug- 
gestion of Vathek: "a large sombre room, with mystical figures 
and strange characters painted upon the walls, and lighted only by 
one lamp, burning upon a table near the front of the stage". At 
the opening of Act III, Mahomet is discovered "sitting alone in 
the eastern manner ". At the opening of Act I, Scene 2, of Beddoes' 
Death's Jest-Book we read this stage direction: "The African 
Coast: a woody solitude near the sea. In the back ground ruins 
overshadowed by the characteristic vegetation of the Oriental 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 53 

regions". The chief Oriental element in Dodsley's brief Rex et 
Pontifex is in the stage directions. Among those who attempted 
Oriental opera were Dodsley, Lewis, and Miss Mitford. 

In the Eighteenth Century the writing of eclogues was a habit 
of English poets. One finds 'Amoebsean Eclogues', 'Moral Eclo- 
gues', "Sacred Eclogues', 'Town Eclogues', and even 'English 
Eclogues'. It is not strange that we should also find eclogues 
African, Arabian, Chinese, East Indian, Persian; and a group 
devoted to life at Botany Bay. Some of these have considerable 
Oriental color; others have comparatively little. The shepherd 
life is no doubt correctly associated with certain parts of the 
Orient, but one often feels that the pastoralism of these pieces is 
pseudo-Latin rather than vitally Eastern. Collins' mature view of 
his success in his pastoral venture was not favorable. The life of the 
caravan and the harem seems more distinctly Oriental than the 
keeping of the flocks — as the conventional poetic shepherd kept 
them — or making love to a pastoral mistress. 

Real translation of Oriental poems is found in Mrs. Montagu — 
with the aid of other wits — and in Jones. Pseudo-translation and 
paraphrase seem far more characteristic of the English Orientalism 
of the Eighteenth Century. It is the period of Chatterton, Ireland, 
and Macpherson. Why should not Collins tell his readers that his 
Eclogues were written by 'Abdallah, a native of Tauris'? He 
closes the preface of the first edition with the reflection, "the 

works of orientals contain many peculiarities, and 

through defect of language, few European translators can do 
them justice". Mangan, at the end of our period, announces that 
his Hundred- Leafed Rose is "By Mohammed ben AH Nakkash, 
called Lamii, or, The Dazzling". Pseudo-translations appear 
from the x\rabic, Chinese, Persian, and Turkish. None from the 
Japanese have been noted. The real translations of the period, in 
the main, were from the old familiar sources — Greek, liatin, 
Italian, French; and from the newly-discovered Germanic or 
Celtic literatures. For the reception of one real translation, see 
above, page 41. Among other translators of note were Sir John 
Bowring, Joshua Marshman, and Sir Charles Wilkins. 

The tendency in translation and in paraphrase seems to be to 
expand, as was the case in earlier periods — in the rendering of the 
Psalms, for example. Jones' paraphrase of the Chinese Ode in 
twenty-four lines is followed by a "verbal translation" in only 



54 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

nine lines. His translation of A Persian Song of Hafiz is written in 
fifty-four lines; the transliteration occupies thirty-six. 

The setting of the Oriental poem is as various as its form or 
theme. It may appear in a real letter (Mrs. Montagu), in an essay 
(Jones), in prose fiction (Mrs. Radclifte and Walter Scott), or in a 
prose frame (Lalla Rookh). As a lyric it appears in the long narra- 
tive poem, Childe Harold, for example; or in the drama, The Bride, 
for example. It can be found as a member of a group of Oriental 
poems, as in the Eclogues of Collins and John Scott; or in non- 
Oriental groups, as in Mrs. Hemans' Lays of Many Lands and 
Songs of Spain, Keble's Christian Year and Moore's National Airs. 
The Oriental poems under the last title, as well as poems by Burns 
and Byron, are among those written, in imagination at least, for 
Eastern tunes. 

The number of Oriental poems written in England from the 
death of Pope to the opening of the Victorian era will depend 
on the definition of the vital adjective. In the Appendix^* we 
have listed about 370 poems. Many of these would doubtless be 
rejected by a more exact critical method. Many others would be 
added by a more sweeping examination of the verse of the period. 
The number as well as the variety of the poems, in any case, is 
sufficient to indicate a wide-spread vogue, however artificial in 
part; a vogue much more extensive in this period than before, and 
destined to live and develop, in some respects with more satisfac- 
tory poetic results, in the Victorian era, and in the Twentieth 
Century. 

No English poet of any note has devoted himself entirely to the 
Orient. Our review has made it clear that in many poets Oriental- 
ism is simply one poetic experiment among several. The Oriental 
poet is usually an eclectic poet. Even Jones, leader in the move- 
ment, is a Grecian and a Latinist. In such poets as Chatterton, 
Moore, Montgomery, Southey, and Mrs. Hemans, the Eastern 
element is accompanied by elements offering the greatest contrast. 
In spite of Lalla Rookh and Byron's Turkish tales, there seems to 
be in our period no poet, with the exception of Jones, whose name 
is so intimately associated with Orientalized poetry as are the 
names of Fitzgerald, Edwin Arnold, and Kipling. 

The experiments of the early Romantic Movement, and of its 



34. See the pages under I, A. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 55 

era of triumph, were subject to that attack of the parodist which 
awaits most conspicuous novelties. The Rebuilding, imitating the 
diction and prosody of The Curse of Kehama, is one of the best 
poems in Rejected Addresses. Among favorites for the parodist 
were Kubla Khan and that oldtime deUght of youthful elocution- 
ists, Casabianca. For further results of this aftermath of the 
Oriental taste, one may examine the pages edited by Jerrold 
and Leonard, Hamilton, and Henry Morley. 



CHAPTER V 

The East and the West 

In this chapter we shall consider some of the common themes of 
English Oriental verse which are concerned with the relations of 
the East to England or other western lands. The subjects are so 
numerous that only some of the more prominent or the more 
significant, for one reason or another, can be mentioned. 

Our poetry records many objects which came into England 
from the East as a matter of course, not under stimulus of any 
special Oriental taste. The catalogue of these would be a long one, 
and doubtless a dry one, of commercial and prosaic value rather 
than poetic. Here belong the drugs and spices, including coffee, 
various kinds of tea, cinnamon, nutmegs; articles of dress; house- 
hold pets such as the canary bird — if we credit that to the Orient — 
and the parrot; the animals of the menagerie;, jewels; gold acquired 
in Eastern residence, and even stocks in Eastern commercial 
ventures; and the mummy of public or private collection. This 
couplet in Young is a fair sample of much of the verse which 
presents this material: 

"Cold Russia costly furs from far, 
Hot China sends her painted jar. "*^ 

"Chunee", London elephant of the early Nineteenth Century, is 
immortalized in Rejected Addresses^^ and in Hood's Address to Mr. 
Cross, of Exeter Change. Hood's Ode to the Cameleopard is one of 
the best humorous Oriental poems of the period. Cawtho/•^?, -^j^ 
The Antiquarians, pictures a dispute over a coin, in which on 
enthusiast gives his view thus : 

" ' It came, ' says he, 'or I will be whipt. 
From Memphis in the Lower Egypt'." 



35. Imperium Pelagi: Strain I. 

36. See Playhouse Musings. 



56 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 57 

Young writes of an imaginary zealous book-collector: 

" So high the generous ardor of the man 
For Romans, Greeks, and Orientals ran. "^^ 

Cowper has occasion to note that linen is imported from India; 
and from the same country comes the cane for his sofa. 

A passage of higher imaginative quality than those just given is 
found in PoUok's sombre Course of Time. In Book VII, his 
vision of the wonders of the resurrection day includes this some- 
what startling conception : 

"The Memphian mummy, that from age to age, 
Descending, bought and sold a thousand times, 
In hall of curious antiquary stowed, 
Wrapped in mysterious weeds, the wondrous theme 
Of many an erring tale, shook off its rags; 
And the brown son of Egypt stood beside 
The European, his last purchaser." 

Some of the trees of England and some of the flowers are either 
of Oriental origin or have Eastern associations recognized by the 
poets. The laurel is a "daughter of the East"; Langhorne in the 
Fables of Flora tells the reader of the Bactrian origin of the crown 
imperial. 

There is not much evidence in the verse of our i>€riod of the 
presence of real Oriental persons of public note in England. Fol- 
lowing the method used in such prose as The Citizen of the World, 
this or that poet introduces a fictitious gentleman from the East 
reporting his observations to the home-land. Probably Moore's 
fictitious letter From Abdallah, in London, to Mohassan, in Ispa- 
han^^ is one of the best pieces of this type. Among the more 
obscure real figures are the negro boxer in Moore, and the ro|>e- 
dancer "Mahomet", "said to be a Turk", in Samuel Johnson. 
Southey addresses an ode to a visiting dignitary from Russia, and 
if we include the Pelew Islands in the Orient, Bowles' poem Abba 
Thule's Lament for His Son Prince Le Boo may be mentioned. We 
are told that the Cashmerian heroine and the hero of Shelley's 
unpublished Zeinab and Kathema arrive in London during the 
story. Moore has a poem on a "beautiful East-Indian", and 
Lovibond writes a series of love-lyrics, of little poetic merit, to 



37. Love of Fame: Satire II. 

38. In The Twopenny Post Bag; Letter VI. 



68 University of Kansas Humanistic Strldies 

"an Asiatic lady" in England — a lady who causes some distur- 
bance in the mind of an English woman friend of the poet. 

The gypsy in England is a theme in poetry both romantic and 
realistic, appearing in "Christopher North", Crabbe, Words- 
worth, The Gypsy's Malison of Lamb, The Gypsy's Dirge of Walter 
Scott, and in many other poets and poems. Sometimes a pictur- 
esque figure about the camp-fire at night, at other times the gj'psy 
is a sly and tattered trickster among the young people of an Eng- 
lish village, or a vagrant brought before the local representative 
of English law. 

There are many examples of the theme, " the Englishman home 
from the Orient". Various are the gifts they bring back from the 
East. One returns with ill health, one with memories of cap- 
tivity, many, of course, in poems of the middle ages, with the 
battle scars of the Crusades. A character in Praed's Arrivals at a 
Watering-Place is "always talking of Bengal". Crabbe's realistic 
picture of provincial English society presents several gentlemen 
returned from the Orient. One was a Captain who "rich from 
India came", bringing pearls, diamonds, costly silks and other 
treasures, which his will left to a feminine relative who loved to 
hear them praised.^^ In another passage in Crabbe"*" appears a 
"sick tall figure" of a man who has returned from India with 
wealth gained and health and spirits destroyed; who moves rest- 
lessly from i)lace to place in his native land without gaining happi- 
ness. It will be remembered that in The Fatal Curiosity it is the 
hoard of gold and jewels Young Wilmot brings from the East 
which is the immediate cause of the tragedy. 

The Oriental taste in England is shown in many ways in the 
verse of the period. Horses or other domestic pets are named 
"Sultan" or "Sultana"; decorations in the drawing-room and 
fanciful structures in garden or park are built in Oriental manner. 
In Threnodia Augustalis, Goldsmith described a place on the 
Thames where novelty 

"From China borrows aid to deck the scene." 

There are various other references to similar matters; the fence 
irregular as the metrical form of the Pindaric ode, the sumraerhouse 
— kiosk, pagoda, or of fashion ' Gothic or Chinese '. In one of the balls 



3Q. The Parish Register: Burials. 
40. The Borough; Letter IX. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 59 

Praed describes, several characters are dressed in Oriental costume, 
and in Peacock's prose farce, The Dilettanti, at the opening of 
Act I, Scene 4, " Miss Comfit, as a Sultana, advances to the front 
of the stage", and Tactic enters "as a Turk". In humorous 
spirit Moore 'Turkifies' current politics or politicians in England; 
or pictures Grimaldi grimacing before the Mandarins in China.*^ 

In deeper manner, the Oriental taste is revealed with reference 
to the literature of the East, and the English literature modeled 
thereon. Orientalism throughout our period was not an accident 
or an unconscious result. Much comment is made upon the cult 
in prose criticism — from which a few notes may be taken — and in 
the verse itself. 

We are told that Collins wrote his Eclogues when seventeen 
years old, after reading the description of Persia in Salmon's 
Modern History. In later years he spoke disdainfully of the 
pieces, called them his "Irish Eclogues", and affirmed that "they 
had not in them one spark of orientalism ".^^ An early critic, 
however. Dr. Langhorne, speaks as follows of the second eclogue: 
" All the advantages that any species of poetry can derive from the 
novelty of the subject and scenery, this eclogue possesses. The 
route of a camel-driver is a scene that scarce could exist in the 
imagination of an European, and of its attendant distress he could 
have no idea. "^^ Nearly a century later Mangan wrote pseudo- 
Oriental translations because "Hafiz was more acceptable to 
editors than Mangan".'** Between Collins and Mangan there is 
sufficient and varied evidence of the English taste for Orientalized 
verse. John Scott, himself an Oriental poet, gives this view in his 
poem On the Ingenious Mr. Jones's Elegant Translations: 

"The Asian Muse, a stranger fair! 
Becomes at length Britannia's care; 
And Hafiz' lays, and Sadi's strains. 
Resound along our Thames's plains. 
They sing not all of streams and bowers. 
Or banquet scenes, or social hours; 
Nor all of Beauty's blooming charms, 
Or War's rude fields, or feats of arms; 
But Freedom's lofty notes sincere. 



41. See The Twopenny Post Bag. Letter II, and The Fudoe Fatnilu in Paris, 
Letter IX. 

42. Page 10 of the edition of Collins cited in the Appendix. 

43. Ihid., p. 131. 

44. Miles, vol. Ill, p. 456. 



60 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

And Virtue's moral lore severe. 
But ah ! they sing for us no more ! 
The scarcely-tasted pleasure's o'er! 
For he, the bard whose tuneful art 
Can best their vary'd themes impart — 
For he, alas! the task declines; 
And Taste, at loss irreparable, repines. 

Churchill, not so much moved by Gothicism, sentimentalism, 
or Orientalism, as many of his contemporaries, does not give so 
favorable an account in the opening lines of The Farewell: 

"Farewell to Europe, and at once farewell 
To all the follies which in Europe dwell; 
To Eastern India now, a richer clime. 
Richer, alas ! in everything but rhyme, 
The Muses steer their course; and, fond of change. 
At large, in other worlds, desire to range; 
Resolved, at least, since they the fool must play. 
To do it in a different place, and way. " 

Englishmen did not need to wait till Tennyson's day to read 
verses on Recollections of the Arabian Nights. The passage on this 
subject in Wordsworth's Prelude is familiar. In Silford Hall 
Crabbe tells his readers that before Sir Walter wrote there were 

" . . . . fictions wild that please the boy. 
Which men, too, read, condemn, reject, enjoy. *' 

Of the library he is describing in the same poem, he says : 

"Arabian Nights, and Persian Tales were there, 
One volume each, and both the worse for wear. " 

He returns to this theme in Master William: 

"Arabian Nights, and Persian Tales, he read. 
And his pure mind with brilliant wonders fed. 
The long romances, wild Adventures fired 
His stirring thoughts: he felt like Boy inspired. 
The cruel fight, the constant love, the art 
Of vile magicians, thrilled his inmost heart. " 

Southey apparently has the English Oriental verse in mind 
when he writes in The Retrospect, in a spirit of reaction, perhaps — 



Osborne: Oriental Dictiofi and Theme 61 

"Oh, while well pleased the lettered traveller roams 
Among old temples, palaces, and domes; 
Strays with the Arab o'er the wreck of time, 
Where erst Palmyra's towers arose sublime; 
Or marks the lazy Turk's lethargic pride. 
And Grecian slavery on llyssus' side, — 
Oh, be it mine, aloof from public strife. 
To mark the changes of domestic life. 
The altered scenes where once I bore a part, 
Where every change of fortune strikes the heart I" 

It is curious to note how many times Wordsworth in The Prelude 
uses an Oriental standard to estimate the value of native English 
delights. Thus he says, that there was a time in his youth when 
all the glories of Eastern history or fiction "fell short, far short, 

Of what my fond simplicity believed 
And thought of London. " 

In his boyhood, the dramatic performances in the country barn 
pleased him more than Genii in a "dazzling cavern of romance". 
The natural surroundings of his early days were "more exquisitely 
fair" than the magnificent gardens — Avhich he describes in true, 
luxuriant Oriental style — shaped for the delight of the Tartarian 
dynasty. At Rydal Mount he records that the English mountain 
spring furnished water which might have been envied by Persian 
kings. It almost seems that Wordsworth, having determined to 
devote his imagination to simple and native life, fought against 
the Oriental taste of the day, thereby revealing its power perhaps. 



When we turn to the Oriental element in western life outside of 
England, we find probably a less varied account than that we have 
just surveyed; but one rich in interest. Cooper's Ver-Vert is an 
amusing record of an East Indian parrot among the nuns of 
France. In Grainger's Sugar-Cane and a score of other poems the 
character and life of the negro in the West Indies or in the United 
States are pictured. We have referred before to the Parthian 
Prince who moves amid Roman scenes, in the days of Nero, in Miss 
Baillie's The Martyr. There is a brief and quite different allusion 
to Eastern visitors in Italy in Rogers' account of life at Venice. 
"Who flocked not thither", the poet asks, — 



62 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

"To celebrate her Nuptials with the Sea? 
To wear the mask, and mingle in the crowd 
With Greek, Armenian, Persian. "^^ 

A volume could doubtless be written on the English poetic 
treatment of the Moors in Spain. This is a frequent theme in our 
period, and is found in drama, lyric, and narrative. The Alhambra, 
the wars between Moors and Spaniards, including the achieve- 
ments of the Cid, the loves between man of one race and maiden 
of the other, the Moorish dance and song, the relation of the 
Mohammedans in Spain to those in Africa, are among the specific 
subjects. In most poets such themes suggested a romantic inter- 
pretation; and in such a poetess as Mrs. Hemans they were among 
the resources of the sentimental muse. Some of the diction of 
Oriental derivation appearing in the verse of our period, reached 
England through Spain. 

The Englishman of our period was a traveller, either in fancy or 
in the flesh; for purposes of pleasure, culture, business or religion. 
In Rhymes on the Road, Moore names Egypt, Carolina, and China, 
as regions where his fellow countrymen might be found, and 
generalizes thus: 

"Go where we may — rest where we will, 
Eternal London haunts us still. " 

It is not strange that English verse should contain many refer- 
ences to Englishmen in the Orient. The group is a motley one, 
including sailor and soldier, painter and priest, bishop and society 
belle. 

Of the Oriental poets themselves, several visited one part or an- 
other of the Orient. Before our period began, Mrs. Montagu pro- 
duced Verses Written in the Chiosk of the British Palace, at Pera, 
Overlooking the City of Constantinople. Jones subscribed several 
of his poems as written in India, and in Plassey-Plain he made 
amusing reference to his wife's ignorance of the native language. 
Byron in the East is too familiar a subject to require notice; 
Heber is mentioned elsewhere in this paper. "L. E. L. ", living 
all her life in London, "had always cherished dreams of Africa", 
and had the dubious satisfaction of dying there.''® But it was only 



45. Italy; XIII. St. Mark's Place. 

46. Miles, vol. VII, p. 108. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 68 

in imagination that Burns, White, Montgomery, Coleridge, Keats, 
Shelley, and the great majority of English poets, ever visited the 
Orient. 

In two interesting pieces of vers de societe^'' Hood writes of young 
women on the eve of their departure for India. John Logan 
writes of a woman whose lover "to Indian climes had roved". 
The Oriental travels of the hero of Alastor are of more serious im- 
portance in English poetry. Perhaps the best example presenting 
sailors in the East, aside from translations, is found in The Ship- 
ivrerJc. Paul Whitehead, in A71 Occasional Song (spoken by a 
stage sergeant) follows the victorious English soldier from Cape 
Breton to "Guardelupe" and Senegal. Praed refers to a judge in 
Bengal, and a character who is "rich in Canton". In Surly Hall 
this poet expresses approval of the painter Hamilton, 

"Whether his sportive canvass shows 
Arabia's sands or Zembla's snows. " 

John Scott, in his Essay on Painting, places English artists, real or 
imaginary, in Jamaica, by the rocks of Ulitea, and by "Nile's vast 
flood on Egypt's level." White of Selborne discussed the hiberna- 
tion of swallows in English nuid, but John Cunningham's bird of 
the air is 

"Winged for Memphis or the Nile. "^^ 

Still more fanciful is Lovibond's account of the flight of the festival 
spirit, weary of Europe, into the Orient; in The Tears of Old May- 
Day. 

In the earlier part of our period there are in English verse a 
score, perhaps a hundred, references to the unknown sources of 
the Nile. Such reference was among the conventional items in 
passages on the great river. It is interesting, therefore, to note 
more than one later allusion to Bruce, as the discoverer of these 
sources. In Crabbe's Adventures of Richard,*^ the stay-at-home 
George inquires of his much-traveled brother Richard, 

"Say, hast thou, Bruce-like, knelt upon the bed 
Where the young Nile uplifts bis branchy head.''" 



47. Lines to a Lady on Her Departure for India, aiul I'm Going to Bombay. 

48. In Ode XXXIII: To the Swallow. 

49. Tales of (he Hall; Book IV. 



64 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

And it is the same dry, stern realist who writes in Clubs and Social 
Meetings : 

" When Bruce, that dauntless traveller, thought he stood 
On Nile's first rise, the fountain of the flood, 
And drank exulting in the sacred spring, 
The critics told him it was no such thing; 
That springs unnumbered round the country ran, 
But none could show him where the first began. "^^ 

Far more romantic, and with as much genuine insight into human 
nature, is Mrs. Heman's fanciful record of The Traveller at the 
Source of the Nile. 

Captain Cook is another English hero whose journeys into far 
Eastern — or Southern — regions are rather frequently recorded in 
verse. Frere is one poet who mentions him, and in his second 
Epistle John Scott has a passage of eight lines, beginning 

"Such, hapless Cook! amid the southern main. 
Rose thy Taheite's peaks and flowery plain. " 

Both Nelson and Casabianca at the battle of the Nile are subjects 
of poetic praise. 

The account of the early Protestant missionary efforts of Eng- 
land is found chiefly in prose; but enters verse here and there. 
Something of the poetic quality that literature has associated with 
the Jesuit fathers in the wilds of America is to be credited to this 
or that servant of Anglicanism or Dissent. In Grahame's Sabbath 
we have a general picture of an imaginary missionary in the islands 
of the South; Praed's Greek poem translated into English under 
the title Hindostan is a tribute to the work of Thomas Fanshawe 
Middleton, Bishop of Calcutta. Heber left his own records of the 
East in prose and verse. Among the poems on the man or his 
work are Mrs. Hemans' To the Memory of Heber, and Southey's 
Ode on the Portrait of Bishop Heber. The first of these two pieces 
is religious and reverential in spirit, scarcely Oriental; the second 
contains a few such lines as, 



and, 



"The Malabar, the Moor, and the Cingalese," 



"Ram boweth down, 
Creeshna and Seeva stoop; 
The Arabian Moon must wane to wax no more. " 



50. The Borough; Letter X. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 66 

It is not appropriate to our purpose to consider the verse of 
Protestant missions in general, or of Catholic, — as in Bowles' Mis- 
sionary, with its resonant Latin line, 

" Eternam pacem dona, Domine.^' 

James Montgomery is perhaps the poet of any note who gives 
this subject most attention. His Greenland is a missionary poem; 
his Cry from South Africa is an evangelical poem, and the mission- 
ary for whom the Farewell was written may, for aught the reader 
knows, have been bound for the Orient. Montgomery's Daisy in 
India is a sincere and simple poem on exile and home memories in 
the East, and is concerned with the Baptist missionary. Dr. 
William Carey. Patriotism is perhaps associated with religion. 
If that is true, we may well note here Walter Scott's prologue to 
The Family Legend, which tells us that the wild tales of "romantic 
Caledon" stir the heart of the exiled Scotchman, 

"Wliether on India's burning coasts he toil. 
Or till Acadia's winter-fettered soil." 

England's dead who rest in the Seven Seas make a great com- 
pany. England's dead in the Orient are for the most part unre- 
corded in English verse, but here and there a group or an individual 
is memorialized by the poet — and for the poet an imaginary 
character may create pathos as well as a real character. Words- 
worth's Liberty is addressed to a woman friend who died, after the 
piece was written, "on her way from Shalapore to Bombay, 
deeply lamented by all who knew her". John Wilson's Widow is 
scarcely an Oriental poem, but the husband for whom the woman 
mourns perished in the East: — 

" For the bayonet is red with gore, 
And he, the beautiful and brave, 
Now sleeps in Egypt's sand. " 

Among the numerous poems of Mrs.Hemans on death, the funeral, 
and the grave, is one inspired by these lines of "Christopher 
North " — The Burial in the Desert. This poem is far more Oriental- 
ized than the one which suggested it, and contains the recurring 
line, 

"In the shadow of the Pyramid. " 
Though not in verse, Macaulay's Latin epitaphs on servants of 



66 University of Kajtsas Humanistic Studies 

England who died in India may be mentioned, as, in a sense, 
"poetic efforts". 

Our present account of the English in the Orient is scant indeed 
in comparison with the actual historical activities. But if all of 
life were described in poetry, or all of English prose transformed 
into verse, the special function of poetry itself would probably be 
unfulfilled. Before it becomes a subject for poetry, says Words- 
worth in the famous Preface, science must become "familiar", 
and its relations contemplated as "manifestly and palpably 
material to us as enjoying and suffering beings". Jones did not 
attempt to versify any large portion of his knowledge of the 
Orient. Sir James Mackintosh in his Discourse Read at the Opening 
of the Literary Society of Bombay, (November 26, 1804), said of 
Sir William: "He was among the distinguished persons who 
adorned one of the brightest periods of English literature". Per- 
haps " English scholarship " might have been better. The speaker 
then proceeded to propose a program of study for the Englishman 
in India, including botany, zoology, mineralogy and pohtical 
economy. The address closed with these words: "On a future 
occasion I may have the honour to lay before you my thoughts on 
the principal objects of inciniry into the geography, ancient and 
modern, the languages, the literature, the necessary and elegant 
arts, the religion, the authentic history and the antiquities of In- 
dia", etc. However it may be with English science and scholar- 
ship, it is safe to say that English poetry has not yet completed 
this program of 1804. 

The English are not the only people of western Europe to appear 
in the Orient in English poetry. If we include the translations of 
Camoens, Tasso, and Ariosto made during our period, we have a 
host of individuals, historical or fictitious, and of epic groups, 
from Spain, Italy, France, and northern Europe. They are 
occupied in sailing about Africa, to visit and conquer India; in 
various Asiatic or East-European travels for pleasure or military 
adventure; in warring with the assembled hosts of the Saracens 
to rescue "// graft Sepolcr<)'\ with mention of which the Gerusa- 
lemme Liberata opens and closes. If these works are not products 
of English imagination, they belong to English poetry, in a liberal 
view, in verse and diction. Camoens and Vasco da Gama both 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 67 

appear in English lyric poetry, the former in The Last Song of 
Camoens, by Bowles; the latter (along with Albuquerk and others) 
in Mickle's Almada Hill. To the themes of epic breadth, we may 
add that of the Napoleonic armies in Russia. 

The relations of Venice to the Orient are barely suggested in the 
opening line of a familiar Wordsworthian sonnet: — 

"Once did She hold the gorgeous east in fee. " 

So far as commercial relations between Venice and the Eastern 
Mediterranean region are concerned, perhaps no more Oriental 
passage could be found than this from Rogers' Italy: 

"Who met not the Venetian.' — now in Cairo; 
Ere yet the Califa came, listening to hear 
Its bells approaching from the Red-Sea coast; 
Now on the Euxine, on the Sea of Azoph, 
In converse with the Persian, with the Russ, 
The Tartar; on his lowly deck receiving 
Pearls from the Gulf of Ormus, gems from Bagdad, 
Eyes brighter yet, that shed the light of love, 
From Georgia, from Circassia. Wandering round. 
When in the rich bazaar he saw displayed. 
Treasures from unknown climes, away he went, 
And, travelling slowly upward, drew ere-long 
From the well-head, supplying all below; 
Making the Imperial City of the East, 
Herself, his tributary. "^^ 

In Faust, Goethe symbolized, by the marriage of Faust with 
Helen, the union of Gothic genius with the classical Greek. Though 
we have in English poetry one book of a long narrative poem 
dedicated to the " Genius of Afric",^^ there is perhaps no poem or 
passage which transcends the usual contrast between the East and 
the West by any thought or imagery of mystic harmony between 
the two. A suggestion in this direction, however, may be found, 
without too fanciful interpretation, in The Bridal of Triermain. 
In the third canto there is a dream of fair maidens in processional — 
maidens of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. For each region 
there is some appropriate imagery and diction. A comparison of 
Scott and Blake seems strange, but in this assembling of the 
continents for the high purposes of poetry, there seems something 



51. Italy; Part I, XI. 

52. Grainger's Sugar-Cane; Book IV. 



68 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

akin to the method of Blake in his geographic symboHsm. First 
come the "Four Maids whom Afric bore", singing in the Moorish 
tongue of the ruins of Carthage, the Siroc of Sahara, and the spell 
of Dahomay. Then follow maidens of "dark-red dye", bearing 
palmetto baskets, and singing of the perished glory of Peru. Next 
enter the maidens whose faces have been tinted by the "suns of 
Candahar", whose Eastern pomp is aided by hennah and sumah, 
who are clad in the costumes of a sensuous land. Finally, appear, 
each representative of her native land, the daughters of France, 
Spain, Germany, and "merry England", — the last dressed "like 
ancient British Druidess". So harmonize for once, in a poet's 
fancy, the Celtic, Occidental, Germanic, and Oriental tones of 
the Romantic Movement. 



CHAPTER VI. 

The Orient Itself 

Our poets sometimes consider "The Orient" or "The East" as 
a unit, without definite boundaries. Again, Asia or Africa is often 
presented as a unit, in a single thought or image. Sometimes 
Oriental reference is made in very vague manner, without any 
specific geographical term or terms. Yet in the body of verse as a 
whole, the reader is not left without abundant, if scarcely coherent, 
details in the poetical map of the East. 

This map reaches from Sarmatia and Zembla on the north — 
with lines extended to the Pole — to the Cape of Good Hope and 
New Zealand on the south ; from northeast to southwest it reaches 
(according to the definition for this study) from Kamchatka to 
Senegal and the Canary Islands. It embraces a hundred countries, 
almost innumerable "coasts" and islands; seas, lakes, and interiors 
remote from ordinary travel — from Caffraria to the Desert of 
Gobi. The portions drawn in clearest design are of course the 
more familiar sections — Arabia, India, Egypt, the Sahara, Turkey, 
etc. But in one passage or another this or that poet sketches in, 
at least in outline or in name, Sumatra, Tahiti, Siam, Madagascar, 
Tartary, and many another region. During our period China and 
Japan are relatively neglected. ^^ 

In the entire region about the Eastern Mediterranean the poets 
often follow the traditions of Biblical or classical literature; yet 
much of this region is modernized, given a fresh and more strictly 
Oriental value. The Palestine of the Crusades, the Egypt of 
Bruce and Nelson, are not Biblical. The isles of Greece as seen by 
Byron and, earlier, by the sailors of The Shipivreck, are not quite 

53. China seems more frequently mentioned than Japan. Boyse has the follow- 
ing Lines in The Triumphs of Nature. He is speaking of a pond in "the magnificent 
gardens at Stowe. in Buckinghamshire". 

" In which, of form Chinese, a structure lies, 
Where all her wild grotesques display surprise. 
Within Japan her glittering treasure yields. 
And ships of amber sail on golden fields. " 
There are of course many other references dealing more directly with China and 
with Japan, but they are usually rather brief. 

69 



70 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

those of Homer or Pindar; the Greece that bows beneath the Turk 
is not the Greece of Thucydides. 

If might be of some interest, but it would be a long task, to 
trace out the geography, history, the social and the natural life, 
of each country as English verse presents it. Many sections are 
usually mentioned in simple and repeated formulas, suggesting 
our study of conventional phrases in Chapter III. Circassia is 
often associated with feminine beauty ; Siberia with cold and wild- 
ness, though one poet describes its slow-moving caravans. The 
witches and the reindeer are frequent items for Lapland. Literary 
Russia hardly appears; or the Russia of serfs and bureaucracy. 
The poetic Russia of the period is that of Catherine or Peter, of 
cold and bears, of the Napoleonic invasion, of the conflict with the 
Turk, or the Russia known through its political relations with 
England. This statement, however, omits the work of Sir John 
Bowring, late in our period.^* 

The climate of the Orient, in the large sense adopted for this 
study, of course has little unity. To consider merely temperature, 
the poets give much attention to extreme cold and extreme heat, 
often by way of antithesis. 'From Zembla's cold to Afric's heat' 
is a typical phrase form. In the more southerly sections, the 
Caucasian Mountains or perhaps Atlas serve as symbols of cold. 
The emphasis, on the whole, is apparently on the heat. Such words 
as hot, torrid, burning, scorching, sunburnt, are frequent in 
descriptions of various parts of Asia and of Africa. In The Fatal 
Curiosity we read of the "eternal sultry summer" of India, and 
one poet writes of the "eternal dog-star" of Africa. The East in 
general is "the land of the sun". Associated in part Mith this 
emphasis on heat are the ideas of disease and of fertility. "Fever- 
ish" is not a rare word; pestilence as well as drouth are often men- 
tioned. It was a "land of births", writes James Montgomery of 
a Southern region; and in a score of poets we read of the prolific 
life in various parts of the South or the East — of the multitudes of 
strange creatures that haunt the jungles, creep along the banks of 
the Nile, or fly above the coral-islands. 

In topographical features, there is frequent reference, probably 
not always appropriate, to "groves" and to "plains"; with the 



54. In prose, a translation of Karamzint 's Poor Lisa appearfd in London about 
180,5 (7). A review of the French translation of his Russia is found in the Miscella- 
neous Essays of Archibald Alison. 



Ofihortie: Orietital Diction and Theme 71 

addition of many valleys and occasional "glens". The Gulf of 
Ornius, the Black Sea, and tlie Caspian Sea are often named, The 
great rivers of the East i)roj)er and of Africa are introduced in 
hundreds of passages — the Euphrates and the Tigris, the Ganges, 
the Nile, the Niger and the (lamliia, the Danube and the Volga. 
The mountains which recei\e most attention are the Himalayas, 
the Caucasian, Atlas, and the Mountains of the Moon. 

Of all the types of Eastern scenery, perhaps none is more fasci- 
nating to the imagination of the poets than the desert. It is some- 
times Arabian, sometimes the Sahara, sometimes simply the 
generic desert. It is a region of "sand-spouts " and "sand-waves "'; 
of drouth and staggering sunshine; of the jjelican and the camel; of 
weary caravan, of mocking mirage and restful oasis; of the "red 
wing of the fierce Monsoon ",^^ and again and again of death. 
Mrs. Hemans writes separate poems on its Flower, its Caravan, and 
its Burial. James Montgomery describes the mirage in these 
lines — jiraising a chieftain hero of his story: 

"Nor less benign his influence than fresh showers 
Upon the fainting wilderness, where bands 
Of pilgrims, bound for Mecca, with their camels, 
I<ie down to die together in despair, 
When the deceitful mirage, that appeared 
A pool of water trembling in the sun. 
Hath vanished from the bloodshot eye of thirst. "*^ 

Sir John Bowring pictures the mirage of the Sah.ara in one of his 
religious lyrics. Better no doubt, as poetry, than most of the more 
elaborate descrij)tions is Shelley's simple if alliterative vision: — 

"... boundless and bare 
The lone and level sands stretch far away." 

Bernardin de St. Pierre was not the only European author of the 
period to turn a study of i)lant life to imaginative purposes. Among 
the English poets, Crabbe followed botany as a diversion, as Cow- 
ley had done before him, and with some poetic residt. Mason's 
Enijlish Garden and Langhorne's Fables of Flora, as well as Darwin's 
Loves of the Plants are among the titles suggestive of this taste. 
In the Oriental verse there are many references to Eastern flowers 
and trees, .\mong the favorite trees are the cypress, tamarind. 



55. Kirke White; Sonnet IX. 

56. The Pelican Island: Canto IX. 



72 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

date, fig, palm, and banyan. The malignant "poison-tree" of 
Java exercises a kind of charm over several poets. Darwin gives 
it considerable space in one of his poems. Among the floAvers most 
often mentioned are the jasmine and the rose^^. Mrs. Hemans' 
Flower of the Desert probably pleased some readers all the more 
because it was given no name, though, in the author's fancy, it 
had a "purple bell". There is perhaps nothing in the Orientalized 
verse to compare with the To a Snoivdrojp of Wordsworth, or with 
The Yellow Violet of Bryant. Dr. Langhorne gives a curious bit 
of criticism on the fourth Eclogue of Collins. "Nevertheless", he 
writes, "in this delightful landscape there is an obvious fault: 
there is no distinction between the plain of Zabran, and the vale 
of Aly : they are hot\\ floioery, and consequently undiversified ... it 
had not occured to [the poet] that he had employed the epithet 
flowery twice within so short a compass ".^^ In the third Eclogue, 
however, Collins names the " gay-motley ed pinks and sweet 
jonquils", the violet and the rose, with the usual footnote to sup- 
port his choice. Campbell's flowers of Numidia, in The Dead 
Eagle, are the alasum, bugloss, fennel, tulips, sunflowers, and 
asphodel. 

The animal life introduced ranges from the coral worm, described 
at some length in Montgomery's Pelican Island, through butter- 
flies, bats, birds, and reptiles, to the large quadrupeds — the camel, 
the giraffe, and the elephant. The gazelle, the antelope, the lion 
and the tiger are favorites, while the hyena occasionally appears. 
The "pard" is a quadruped of the East in the verse of Miss 
Baillie, Keats, and others. Keats has this simile in Otho the Great: 
"Hunted me as the Tartar does the boar". The Russian bear 
enters the scene at rather long intervals. The kangaroo appears 
in a Fable by Hood and its "sad note " is heard in Southey's Botany 
Bay Eclogues. The giraffe is described in one passage by Mont- 
gomery, and is the chief figure in one of Hood's poems. ^^ The 
gazelle of Lalla Rookh will be remembered. The zebra appears in 
Keats and in Wells; and Shelley places the llama in India. To 
Crabbe, as we have seen, a portion of the East is the "far land of 
crocodiles and apes"; but in general the near relatives of man do 
not receive much attention. Perhaps for historical reasons, the 



57. See also supra, p. 48. 

58. Edition of Collins named in the Appendix, I, A; p. 137. 
50. Ode to the Cameleopard. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 73 

words "baboon", "chimpanzee", "gorilla" and the like are rare 
words, if found at all, in the English verse of our period. This 
passage from Miss Baillie may be considered rather exceptional: 

" 'Twill be as though a troop of mowing monkeys. 
With antic mimic motions of defiance, 
Should front the brindled tiger and his brood. "^^ 

Among the birds given most attention are the "locust-bird", 
the crocodile bird, the vulture, and in particular, the pelican, the 
ostrich, the bird of paradise, and the nightingale. The "desert 
pelican" is a phrase of Keble's, and this species is given much 
attention not only in Montgomery's poem, but also in Thalaba. 
The albatross is doubtless nowhere else so emphasized as in The 
Ancient Mariner, but it is found in this or that poem in a setting 
more strictly Oriental. In Lalla Rookh, among the birds are the 
blue pigeons of Mecca, the "thrush of Indostan", and the Indian 
grosbeak. 

Shelley seems somewhat fond of the word "snake", and he 
introduces a poetic word in "cobra-di-capel". Hood reminds the 
lady departing for India that in that country, 

"... the serpent dangerously coileth. 
Or lies at full length like a tree." 

The crocodile of the English poets is the "river-dragon", or the 
"devil-beast". He is king in Southey's fancied city of Croco- 
dilople. Beddoes devoted a sonnet to it, and places the humming- 
bird safely in its "iron jaws". One poet honors our country by 
naming the "American crocodile". Associated also with the 
Nile is a serpent in Wells' Joseph and His Brethren. Among the 
curses wherewith Phraxanor curses Joseph is this: 

" .... May the huge snake 
That worships on the Nile, enring and crush thee!"®^ 

A review of the numerous passages on the camel and the ele- 
phant would show many interesting details of imaginative treat- 
ment. The 'snort' of the camel is probably one of the strangest 
animal sounds to be found in the verse we are studying. Jones, in 
Solima, makes the camels 'bound o'er the lawn like the sportful 
fawn'. In the play just referred to they are found "dreaming in 

60. The Bride, I, 3. 

61. II. 3. 



7-4 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

the sun ". The following somewhat curious passage may be 
quoted from an oV>scure poem: 

"The hungry traveller in the dreary waste 
From the slain camel shares a rich repast : 
While parched with thirst, he hails the plenteous well. 
Found in the stomach's deep capacious cell. " - - 

The elephant in London was briefly noticed in Chapter V. In 
his native regions he is presented in a variety of ways. Hood's 
young lady who is going to Bombay remarks that "elephants are 
horses there". In Miss Baillie's The Bride there are two references 
to the human body trampled under an elephant's feet, as well as 
a vigorous description of the clearing of a path through the forest 
by an elephant's supple trunk. One of the most original images 
is found in Montgomery, with reference to the dead body of the 
great beast: — 

" Bees in the ample hollow of his skull 
Piled their wax-citadels and stored their honey. "^"^ 

For the sake of comparison of passages on the same theme, 
these two quotations may be given, the first from Montgomery, the 
second from Milman: 

"The enormous elephant obeyed their will. 
And, tamed to cruelty with direst skill. 
Roared for the battle, when he felt the goad. 
And his proud lord his sinewy neck bestrode, 
Through crashing ranks resistless havoc bore. 
And writhed his trunk, and bathed his tusks in gore. "''^ 

" As in the Oriental wars where meet 
Sultan and Omrah, under his broad tower 
Moves stately the huge Elephant, a shaft 
Haply casts down his friendly rider, wont 
To lead him to the tank, whose children shared 
With him their feast of fruits : awhile he droops 
Affectionate his loose and moaning trunk; 
Then in his grief and vengeance bursts, and bears 
In his feet's trampling rout and disarray 
To either army, ranks give way, and troops 
Scatter, while, swaying on his heaving back 
His tottering tower, he shakes the sandy plain. "^* 



62. Cambridgo: The Scribleriad; Book I. 

63. The Pelican Island; Canto VI. The whole pas.sago is interesting. 

64. The World before the Flood; Canto VII. 
G5. Samor, Lord of the Bright City, Book XI. 



Oshorne: Oriental Diction and Theme 75 

The last selection is from a poem of Saxon England, the "Bright 
City" of the title being Gloucester. 

Anthropological details are not to be expected in this period, 
even if they could be given with poetic result. For the most part 
the poets confine themselves to color and to general characteristics 
of hair and eyes. One does not read of 'little yellow people', 
though Walter Scott writes of the hue of "golden glow" caused 
by the "suns of Candahar".^^ But such terms as sable, sooty, 
black, swart, swarthy, and dark-skinned are in frequent use. Mac- 
auley gives us the phrase, "Syria's dark-browed daughters"." 
The idea of the special beauty of the Oriental women, as well as 
of the houris and peris is not rarely introduced. Lloyd has a four- 
line passage on the feet of the Chinese ladies, ill adapted for 
pedestrianism,'*'* but Moore, in The Veiled Prophet, refers more 
courteously to "the small, half-shut glances of Kathay". 

Among social groups most often notice<i, are bands of thieves 
and pirates, the women of the harem, the members of the caravan, 
the Chaldean star-watchers, the crowds about the car of Jugger- 
naut, the priests and people in the temple, shepherds, merchants, 
armies on battlefield or in camp. In a larger sweep, one finds as 
groups unified by imagination, the "children of Brama", and the 
inhabitants of all the Moslem world. The idea of extensive pop- 
ulations is frequently met. Johnson actually gives some figures 
for a number of regions, in his Septem Mtates. Such expressions 
as thousands, tens of thousands, myriads, "million-peopled", as 
well as horde, tribe, clan, etc., do not seem accidental in the Ori- 
ental verse. These social groups, larger or smaller, are headed by 
"Sophy, Sultan, and Czar", by Pharaohs, calii)hs, satraps, omrahs, 
kings and queens. Not very many historical persons of note step 
forth from the masses. The list includes Attila, Semiramis, Zen- 
obia, the False Prophet and some of his successors, Confucius,®'* a 
few Persian poets, and other names found in Greek, Latin, or Bibli- 
cal records. Harte mentions Mesva, "an Arabian physician well 
skilled in botany ";^'^ and Crabbe mentions Fasil and Michael as 



66. See supra, p. 68. 

67. In The Battle of the Lake Reyillus. 

68. The Cobbler of Crippleoate's Letter. 

69. The association of names in this couplet from Boyse's Oil the Death of Sir 
John Jaw.es, Bart, is interesting: 

"To practice more than Epictetns taiight, 
Or Cato acted, or Confucius thought." 

70. In Evloqius; or. The Charitable Mason. 



76 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

evil Abyssinians of his own day. Kosciusko belongs to the roll of 
heroes in English poetry, along with William Tell and George 
Washington. 

The social life is, except for a few longer poems like Lalla Rookh, 
represented in fragments, not very easily brought together to 
fashion a clear picture. Much is said of war, of worship, of com- 
mercial life. Something is given of life on the sea, in the forest, in 
city streets. In the period which produced Walter Scott and 
Planche it is natural to find no little attention given to Oriental 
costume. Southward, we find the nearly nude barbarians of 
Africa, and the "haik" of the Algerians. Farther North and East, 
we learn something of capote, turban, shawl, horse-tails, sheep- 
skin caps, and various priestly robes. Many rich costumes are 
described; of silk, perhaps, and decorated with "gems fit for a 
Sultan's diadem". The henna of feminine toilet is rather often 
mentioned, and occasionally the sumah. There are references to 
the veils of the Turkish women, and to the black masks of the 
Arabian women. As to military armor and tactics, the work of 
the elephant is perhaps the most characteristic novelty. Lance 
and sword seem to be carried into Oriental warfare by the imagina- 
tion of English poets, and the Parthian bow and arrow, along with 
some other weapons, are to be credited to the traditions of Biblical 
or classical literature rather than to modern knowledge of the East. 
The scimitar is a favorite of the poets, however, and the jerrid 
and the ataghan are among the weapons honored by footnotes. 
The great Eastern hunt, in which game of various species is driven 
gradually into the waiting corral by a circle of hunters, is described 
in several passages. ^^ The Moorish dances of Spain and some of 
the dances of the East itself are noticed in this or that passage. 

The life of the home is not prominent, though domestic life of 
one type or another is presented in The Curse of Keliama, Thalaha, 
Lalla Rookh, and other poems. The relation of father and daughter 
in the two chief Oriental poems of Southey is presumably modeled 
on the good old English standards in large degree. In Byron, 
there is probably a closer approach to the actual conditions of the 
East. There are comparatively few descriptions of the interiors 
of private homes. Life in the tent, by soldier, merchant or exile, 
may be viewed to some extent as a substitute for the life of parlor 



71. See, for example, The Prelude, Book X. 



Oshorne: Oriental Diction and Theme 77 

and kitchen. At least it was less familiar to the majority of Eng- 
lish readers. It is interesting to note that the "black tents" of 
Sohrab and Rusturn are not the first of their kind to appear in 
English verse; for we find the "sable tents" of the Arabians in 
John Scott's Zerad. 

The art of the Orient may be noted chiefly with respect to 
language, literature, and architecture, with very brief mention of 
music and painting. 

So far as romantic interest is concerned, the ancient .symbolic 
characters of Eastern language may correspond with the runes of 
the North — both are poetic subjects in our period. These lines of 
Montgomery, like various early passages on the hidden sources of 
the Nile, emphasize recent progress in our knowledge of the Orient : 

"Egj'pt's grey piles of hieroglyphic grandeur, 
That have survived the language which they speak. 
Preserving its dead emblems to the eye. 
Yet hiding from the mind what these reveal. "^^ 

Perhaps no Oriental language receives such tribute as Jonson gave 
to "Latin, queen of tongues"," or Milton to Italian at the close of 
one of his sonnets : — 

"Questa e lingua di cui ni vanta Ainore. " 

Jones gives an amusing account, in Plassey-Plain, of Lady Jones' 
experience in learning the native tongue or tongues in India. The 
elephants and perroquets were sympathetic with her, the poem 
states, but knew no western language; and as for the "patient 
dromedaries", "Arabic was all they talked". Mrs. Montagu, 
according to her own account, was in somewhat the same linguistic 
isolation in Turkey. On March 16, 1718, she wrote from Constan- 
tinople, "The memory can retain but a certain number of images; 
and 'tis as impossible for one human creature to be master of ten 
different languages, as to have in perfect subjection ten different 
kingdoms ... in Pera they speak Turkish, Greek, Hebrew, Ar- 
menian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Sclavonian, Wallachian, Ger- 
man, Dutch, French, English, Italian, Hungarian; and what is 
worse, there are ten of these languages spoken in my own family". 
Cotton — himself a doctor — speaking of a medical prescription, 



72. The Pelican Island; Canto II. 

73. A Fit of Rhyme against Rhyme. 



78 University of Kansas Humanistic Stvdies 

says that 'it was iVrabic to you and me'. For the advantages of 
knowing Arabic when among the Arabians, one may turn to 
Orlando's account in Hoole's translation of Ariosto.'^ 

Some of the Oriental writers mentioned in English verse are 
fictitious. Omar Khayyam, it seems, was scarcely known in Eng- 
land during the earlier part of our period. Hafiz, Saadi, and a few 
other Eastern poets are mentioned. The works attributed to 
Confucius are rarely noticed in our verse, though an English trans- 
lation by Joshua Marshman appeared in 1809. The chief emphasis 
is probably upon the Koran, from which various ideas are wrought 
into English verse, and on Arabian Nights. The J^edas are 
occasionally mentioned, and a number of translations from the 
Sanskrit, or related Indian languages, were made by Jones and 
others. Some passages referring to the Arabian Nights have already 
been noted. One more may be added, though it is not in very 
poetic language: — 

"It minds one of that famous Arab tale 
(First to expand the struggling notions 
Of my child-brain) in which the bold poor man 
Was checked for lack of 'Open Sesame'."''^ 

A very important art of the Orient, according to our poets, is 
architecture. There are in our period no Oriental poems to rival 
the Ode on a Grecian Urn or On Seeing the Elgin Marbles; none like 
Rossetti's Burden of Nineveh; but there are many passages and at 
least one poem of some note on the pyramids. Orientalized poetry 
is full of temples, fanes, domes, mosques, minarets, pagodas, 
kiosks, and palaces. These structures are in general to the Oriental 
taste what the medieval castle was to Gothic taste^^' or the "druid- 
ical circle" to the Celtic. Now in the background, now in the 
foreground, is the gigantic car of Juggernaut, wreathed with 
flowers, crushing its victims to death. In the temples are grim 
forms of huge, misshapen idols. On the desert sands are the 
prostrate statue of the tyrant and the crumbled walls of palaces. 
The Alhambra receives a genuine Oriental description in Mrs. 
Hemans' Abencerrage. P^lsewhere one finds reference to the great 
temple at Mecca, to the sacred stone and Zemzem-well. There 



74. Book XXIII. Page 199 of the edition cited in Appendix. 

75. Arthur Hallam: Medilntive Fragments, VI. 

76. Yet in Thf Bride, out of fifteen scenes we have eight in or before a castle. 
There are two castles in this play: that of Rasinga and that of Saraarkoon. 



Osborne: Oriental Diciion and Theme 79 

are several brief references to the great wall of China. Hardly any 
type of Oriental passage is more frequent than that which exhibits 
the pathos of the great Eastern ruins — the ruins of Babylon, Pal- 
myra, Memphis, Carthage, or Eastern ruins in general. Sometimes 
there is a definite didactic touch, as in this line from Boyse's 
Retirement: — 

"And what Palmyra is, — Versailles may be." 

Oriental painting, so far as our verse notices it, seems to be done 
largely by Englishmen. That the art of the Chinese |)ainters was 
not always fully appreciated is clear from this line of Young's: — 

■'The point they aim at is deformity.""" 

The hanging gardens of Babylon are sometimes noted, and minor 
"grove " and even " lawn " appear now and then. Lovers of Kuhla 
Khan will remember the 

"... gardens bright with sinuous rills 
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;" 

by the borders of Alpb. Wordsworth in The Prelude''^ has a much 
more elaborate description of the gardens of Cehol, fashioned for 
the delight of the Tartarian dynasty. 

Among musical instruments are the timbrel and the psaltery, 
suggesting the Biblical influence. The lute is in Oriental verse as 
well as in the Elizabethan lyric. More strictly Oriental are the 
favorite atabal, tiie "gong-peal and cymbal-dank", the rebeck 
(though this is found in U Allegro), and the bells upon the dancer's 
ankles.''^ Various more or less nmsical chants, battle-cries, and 
lamentations of mourners are introduced; the "tecbir" is heard 
in (piite a number of poems. In The Bride of Ahydos one finds the 
"Ollahs". the call of the muezzin, the "wul-wulleh", and the 
"hymn of fate' by the Koran-chanters. The fact that a number 
of poems are written, or announced as written, for Eastern "airs" 
may indicate some interest in Oriental music. Moore paid con- 
siderable attention to musical matters in Lalla Roohh; not neglect- 
ing the customary explanations of footnotes. One learns from him 
something of the pastoral reed .and the A])yssinian trumpet; of 



77. Love of Fame, thr Universal Passion; Satire VI. 

78. Book VIII. 

79. All the instruments named in this sentence arc found in Tfw Vision of Don 
Roderick, stanzas 19 and 25. 



80 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

"kerna" and "syrinda"; of the bells on the waists or ankles of the 
dancers. He tells us (quoting, as often) that **The Easterns used 
to set out on their longer voyages with music". The song of 
Zelica sung to the lute is like that of the dying bulbul. "There's 
a bower of roses" is sung 

"In the pathetic mode of Isfahan." 

The mythology of the Eastern peoples appeals to the imagina- 
tion of the English poets; their religions awake the fancy of some, 
arouse the missionary zeal and the sense of English rectitude and 
sanity in others. A religious element enters into some of the wars 
and racial antagonisms considered in our verse. In his review of 
Lalla Rookh, J efirey has this to say of the ethics of the great world 
lying beyond the borders of Europe: "It may seem a harsh and 
presumptuous sentence, to some of our Cosmopolite readers; but 
from all we have been able to gather from history or recent obser- 
vation, we should be inclined to say that there was no sound sense, 
firmness of purpose, or principled goodness, except among the 
natives of Europe, and their genuine descendants". 

The time was not ripe for a study of comparative religion, or 
for a World's Congress of Religions. Yet in Shelley and others we 
have ideas far more progressive than that just given from the 
famous critic. If Shelley is somewhat disdainful of social religion 
in general, he limits his disdain to no one particular embodiment 
of it. He writes in one line of 

"Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord."^'' 

In another poem he wrote: 

"And Oromaze, Jo.shua, and Mahomet, 
Moses, and Buddh, Zerdusht, and Brahin, and Foh."^^ 

Southey, while professing in his prefaces the orthodox hostility to 
Oriental religions, reveals considerable beauty in some aspects of 
them. In many poems, however, it is the horrible that is empha- 
sized. 

The Asiatic and African religions are often considered in a very 
general way, under such conceptions as superstition, heathendom, 
idolatry, paganism, and the like. INIore specifically, the chief 

80. Queen Mab; VII. 

81. The Revolt of Islam; X, .31. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 81 

faiths introduced are sun-worship, the Egyptian worship of ani- 
mals, Buddhism, and Mohammedanism. Confucianism receives 
little attention in the verse of our period, and it is doubtful if 
Shinto is even mentioned. Certain Egyptian gods are often 
named — Apis, Anubis, Isis, and Osiris. The gods of India to whom 
Jones writes hymns include Bhavani, Camdeo, Durga, Ganga, 
Indra, Lacshmi, Narayena, Sereswaty, and Surya. The East 
Indian ascetics are introduced in a number of passages, and the 
"devoted Bride of the fierce Nile" appears in Lalla Rookh. In 
many poems the car of Juggernaut is pictured, and the suttee 
rebuked or pitied. Much that is poetically delightful in Eastern 
religion, however, is given to English readers. The peris, houris, 
and glendoveers are perhaps as ])leasing as the fairies of Celtic lore, 
and certainly less grim than Woden, Thor, and the Valkyries, made 
familiar by the poets of the Gothic Renaissance. 

Apart from Southey and Moore, the chief emphasis is probably 
upon Mohammedanism — as a subject for English verse, less novel 
than the ancient faiths of Persia, Egypt, and India. Mohammed 
is the "false prophet". Much is taken from the Koran; ridicule 
or poetic approval is given to the Mohammedan paradise. Polyg- 
amy, sensuality, the vow of temperance, the cruelty of the bigot, 
are among the themes. "The Turk" was often a term in an ex- 
pression of reproach including the Papist and the Jew. In a 
moment of satirical humor an English poet might write in such 
fashion as this : 

"The sage Mahometans have ever paid 
Distinguished honours to the fool and mad";*^ 

or this: 

"That every Mussulman was killed in battle, 
A fate most proper for such heathen cattle. 
Who do not pray to God our way."^^ 

To return a moment to the farther East, and, once more, to Miss 
Baillie's Bride. In that dramatic poem we find these interesting 
passages; on idolatry in general, on transmigration (not an un- 
common theme), and on Nirvana, a rather rare theme in our 
period : — 



82. Cambridge: The Scribleriad; Book I. 

83. Wolcott: Peter's Pension. 



88 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

" Like a dressed idol in its carved alcove, 
A thing of silk and gems and cold repose."*^ 

"When in the form of antelope or loorie 
She wends her way to Boodhoo. "^"^ 

"Even like Niwane, when the virtuous soul 
Hath run, through many a change, its troubled course. "^^ 

Hood's humor does not fail him when he chances to write of the 
suttee : — 

"Go where the Suttee in her own soot broileth."*^ 

One finds a much more sombre treatment of this theme in these 
passages, from Montgomery and Bowles respectively: 

"The pyre, that burns the aged Bramin's bones 
Runs cold in blood, and issues living groans. 
When the whole Haram with the husband dies. 
And demons dance around the sacrifice. "^^ 

". . . .on Ganges' banks 
Still superstition hails the flame of death. 
Behold, gay dressed, as in her bridal tire, 
The self-devoted beauteous victim slow 
Ascend the pile where her dead husband lies: 
She kisses his cold cheeks, inclines her breast 
On his, and lights herself the fatal pile 
That .shall consume them both!"^" 



84. The Bride; I. 1. 

85. Ibid.; Ill, 2. 

86. Ibid.: I. 2. 

87. Lines to a Lady on Her Departure for India. 

88. Verses to the Memory of the Late Uichard Reynolds; III. 

89. The Spirit of Discovery; Book V. 



CHAPTER VII. 

Poetic Values In English Orientalism 

This chapter attempts to give a brief summary of the chief 
psychological and aesthetic reactions of English poetry in our 
period upon the Orient and the Oriental taste. In part, the chapter 
may serve as a review of the preceding pages. First may be noted 
some values which represent, in the main, the characteristic spirit 
of the Eighteenth Century; and secondly, those which represent, 
on the whole, the spirit of the Romantic Movement. 

Among the signs of the Eighteenth Century spirit are satire, 
parody, emphasis on common sense and reason, artificiality, and 
didacticism. In the earlier part of our period, a satirical spirit 
which touches Oriental matters at times is found in Cambridge's 
Scribleriad and in the verse of "Peter Pindar". A humorous 
treatment of Warren Hastings appears in The Rolliad. Parody of 
Orientalized verse is found in Rejected Addressee, The Anti-Jacobin, 
and in many detached poems. Among the individual poems paro- 
died by one humorist or another were The Curse of Kehavia, Kubla 
Khan, Lalla Rookh, The Giaour, The Destruction of Sennacherib, 
Casabianca, and Abou ben Adhem. 

An interest in novel information is apparent in the formidable 
array of footnotes which accompany the longer Oriental poems, in 
prefaces, introductions, and in numerous essays. The early Nine- 
teenth Century essayists — Jeffrey, Macaulay, Mackintosh, Tal- 
fourd, Sydney Smith, and others — gave considerable attention to 
the natural and social conditions in the Orient proper, and in 
Africa and Australia. A semi-scientific interest in the natural 
history of the East appears in the verse of Erasmus Darwin and 
others. The Eighteenth Century poets were fond of writing on 
such abstract themes as Disease, Health, Superstition, Commerce, 
Navigation, Taste, Liberty, etc., and it is not surprising to find 
them again and again drawing u])on the Orient for some of their 

8S 



84 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

material. Reflections on current European conditions or on life 
in general were sometimes emphasized by lessons taken from the 
East. Lyttelton attempts to arouse England to battle for the 
liberties of Europe with the warning, 

"Lo! France, as Persia once, o'er every land 
Prepares to stretch her all-oppressing hand."^" 

If the elephant was an interesting theme for romantic observation, 
it could also be utilized for didactic purposes, as this passage 
(antedating our period) from Thomson's Summer indicates: 

"O truly wise! with gentle might endowed, 
Though powerful, not destructive. Here he sees 
Revolving ages sweep the changeful earth, 
And empires rise and fall; regardless he 
Of what the never-resting race of men 
Project: thrice happy' could he 'scape their guile. 
Who mine, from cruel avarice, his steps; 
Or with the towery grandeur swell their state, 
The pride of kings ! or else his strength pervert, 
And bid him rage amid the mortal fray. 
Astonished at the madness of mankind. " 

The Romantic enthusiasm for the remote was to some extent 
chilled by the home-loving patriotism of the English character and 
by a realistic suspicion that not all is gold that glitters — in the 
distance. There are various poems and passages expressing the 
home-sickness of one whom fate has carried far over seas. Gold- 
smith's emigrants in The Deserted Village are not the only ones who 
leave the British Isles with a sense of loss. In The Sabbath, Grahame 
writes thus of the Scotchman exiled in the Southern seas : 

"What strong mysterious links enchain the heart 
To regions where the morn of life is spent! 
In foreign lands, though happier be the clime, 
Though round our board smile all the friends we love, 
The face of nature wears a stranger's look. " 

At the end of his imaginary Voyage Round the World, Montgomery 
returns home with no little rejoicing: — 

"Now to thee, to thee, I fly. 
Fairest isle, beneath the sky, 
To my heart, as in mine eye. 



90. To Mr. Glorcr: On His Poem of Leonidas. (1734.) 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 86 

I have seen them, one by one. 
Every shore beneath the sun, 
And ray voyage now is done. 

While I bid tliem all be blest, 

Britain is my home, my rest; 

— Mine own laud! I love thee best." 

If the sturdy, persistent realism of Crabbe sees much that is sordid 
in the English village, it is not deceived by the poetic praises of 
distant regions. Witness this passage in Edward Shore: 

" 'Tis thus a sanguine reader loves to trace 
The Nile forth rushing on his glorious race; 
Calm and secure the fancied traveller goes. 
Through sterile deserts and by threat 'ning foes; 
He thinks not then of Afric's scorching sands, 
Th' Arabian sea, the Abyssinian bands; 
Fasils and Michaels, and the robbers all. 
Whom we politely chiefs and heroes call: 
He of success alone delights to think. 
He views that fount, he stands upon the brink. 
And drinks a fancied draught, exulting so to drink. " 

The common sense of Gifford rebels against the obscure and arti- 
ficial style in which some reports of foreign lands are given to the 
English stay-at-home, in an interesting passage opening with the 
lines, 

"Lo! Beaufoy tells of Afric's barren sand 
In all the flowery phrase of fairy land", 

and closing with the line, 

"And call for Mandeville, to ease my head. "*^ 

We have already indicated John Foster's opinion of the Rama- 
ijuna.^'^ His disapproval of Indian architecture was equally em- 
phatic. The buildings of Hindostan are "fantastic, elaborate, and 
decorated to infinity .... there is device, and detail, and ramifi- 
cation, and conceit, and fantasy, to the absolute stupifaction of 
the beholder. " The standards by which he condemns this con- 
fused Eastern architecture are found not in English but in Grecian 
architecture, with its "harmonious simplicity".®^ 



91. The Baviad. 

92. Supra, p. 41. 

93. Review of Daniell's Oriental Scenery. 



86 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

The Romantic poet, at least in his Romantic moods, spoke 
otherwise. The Orient, like the Occident, and with some advan- 
tages over the latter, offered him that escape from the local, the 
familiar, the prosaic, that flight into the remote and the unknown 
which his heart desired. The Romantic critic understood the 
situation. "Passion is lord of infinite space", wrote Hazlitt, "and 
distant objects please because they border on its confines, and 

are moulded by its touch Distance of time has much the 

same effect as.distance of place ".^'' To Kirke White, "The distant 
prospect always seems more fair. "^^ Keats sings, 

"Ever let the Fancy roam, 
Pleasure never is at home. '^^ 

Coleridge gives us this couplet in Christabel: 

"She was most beautiful to see. 
Like a lady of a far countree. "*' 

Moore voices somewhat the same conception in quite a different 
manner in these lines sent home from the new world: 

"Oh, Lady! these are miracles, which man. 
Caged in the bounds of Europe's pigmy plan. 
Can scarcely dream of; which his eyes must sc:*. 
To know how beautiful this world can be!"^^ 

The sense of space and of change luay be gained by rapid move- 
ment; and it seems no accident that in the longer Oriental narra- 
tives there is found something of the "Glory of Motion" — a 
restless passing to and fro in place of the stable abiding supposed 
to represent the typical English character. Southey did not travel 
very extensively, and he never shm- the banks of the Susquehanna 
of which he dreamed; but in Thalnba his imagination produced an 
almost constant and phantasmagoric shifting of scenes. Mrs. 
Shelley records that she and her husband were very fond of travel- 
ing, and would have travelled much more extensively than they 
did if circumstances had permitted. But following his hero in 
Alastor, Shelley was "on the go" through most of the poem. 
Simple little journeys to France or Spain or Italy did not satisfy 



94. Tabic Talk: Why Distant Objects Please. 

95. From a Fragment ("The western gale," etc.). 

96. To Fa7icy. 

97. Christabel; Part I. 

9S. Epistle IX .... From the Banks of the River St. Lawrence. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 87 

the craving for change in the true i)oet of the Romantic Movement. 
An example of this restlessness of fancy, almost morbid in this 
case perhaps, is found in the dreams Kirke White had of his final 
resting place. In a mood of quiet English feeling he could write 
of a commonplace English burial-ground, 

''Here would I wisli to sleej). — ^This is the spot 
Which I have long marked out to lay my bones in; 



Beneath this yew I would be sepulchred. 
It is a lovely spot!" etc.^^ 

At another time the Gothic taste assails him, and he answers its 
demand thus: 

"Lay me in the Gothic tomb, 
In whose solemn fretted gloom 
t may lie in mouldering state, 
W^ith all the grandeur of the great. "'*"' 

Once again, his craving for something more remote, more un- 
familiar, more wild, finds expression in these lines: 

"Or that my corse should, on some desert strand, 
Lie stretched beneath the Simoom's blasting hand.""" 

"Distance of time has much the same effect as distance of place." 
Occasionally the antiquity of South American civilization is 
expressed in English verse of our period; but it is to the Orient 
that the poet naturally turned to find remoteness of space and 
remoteness of time combined. So far as poetry was concerned, 
Asia was the cradle of the human race; and the ruins of Egypt were 
far older than the medieval castle, Roman road, or the druidical 
circle of England. In the diction of the Orientalized verse 
terms of antiquity are common. There are numerous such phrases 
as "shattered with age", "antique marble", and "ancient lore". 
Egypt is "old" and "hushed", "ancient", "eldest" and "dead"; 
she is the "motherland of all the arts", and the "land of memory". 
One poet at least writes definitely of "India's memories". It is 
not only human culture that is old — the astronomy of Chaldea, 
the commerce of Phoenicia, the pyramids and hieroglyphics of 
Egypt, the mythology of India — but even nature herself seems to 



99. Lines Written in Wilford Church-yard. 

100. Thanatos. 

101. Cliftov Grote. 



88 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

imagination older in a land humanly old. One reads of the "old 
Ganges", the "old Euphrates". Beside the charm of the merely 
remote, in space or in time, the Romantic poet voiced the appeal 
of the immeasurable, the inaccessible, the unmastered. That 
element of the formless and the void in Oriental life which so 
offended Foster was often a source of delight to Shelley, to Byron, 
and to many lesser poets. To note the diction again, such words 
as vast, vasty, enormous, sumless, horde, cloud, (for a group of 
people), host, millions, are frequent. x\mong the Miltonic nega- 
tives characteristic of this mood are "impenetrable", "immeas- 
ureable", "invisible", "insatiate". It is largely this aspect of the 
Romantic Movement which finds such severe condemnation in 
Paul Elmer More. His judgment is that "Romanticism is a 
radical confusion of the unlimited desires and the infinite inner 
check. In its essential manifestation it is thus a morbid and 
restless intensification of the personal emotions ".^''^ 

There was a charm for many English imaginations in the very 
horrors, the very evils, strange and brutal and vast, which a 
knowledge of the East revealed. If one chooses to select such 
matters from English Oriental verse and combine them, one may 
witness a weird procession of terrible images. There pass before 
the reader, mutes and eunuchs, captives and crowds of half-naked 
slaves ; the car of Juggernaut, crushing human bodies beneath it : 

"Beneath the creaking axle the red flood 
Gushes unceasing; scattered on the stones 
Lie crushed and mangled bones; 
Through slaughter and through blood 

The chariot of the god — the dark god — reels; 
And laughter — shrill unnatural laughter — rings 
As each mad victim springs 
To meet the murderous wheels. "^"^ 

In the background are seen the ugly form of the poison-tree, the 
bodies of those who died from thirst in the desert, and a swarm of 

"Afric's black, lascivious, slothful breed, "i"" 

The scene changes to the abodes of evil beyond death, and amid 
terrifying lights, an infernal storm of meteors and hailstones, the 



102. The Drift of Romanticism; p. 270. 

103. Praed: Hindostan. 

104. Young: Imperium Pelagi; Strain V. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 89 

stench of sulphurous clouds and the din of lash and hammer, rises 
the vague, malignant form of Azyoruca, with her thousand grasp- 
ing arms.^"^ 

There is, according to Ruskin, "a strange connection between 
the reinless play of the imagination, and a sense of the presence 
of evil."^''^ "Southern Asia, in general ", wrote De Quincey in his 
CWi/emons, ''is the seat of awful images and associations". Not 
only the terrors of Asia, but the xVfrican crocodile, and the Malay, 
affecting the abnormal dreams of De Quincey, affected English 
literature. Perhaps nothing in the verse of our period can rival 
his prose imagery of Oriental horrors. 

These terrors appear even in the aesthetic imagination of Keats. 
In Isabella the ears of the Ceylon pearl diver "gushed blood". 
More characteristic, however, for this poet, is such a mingling of 
the awful with the beautiful as one finds in these lines from The 
Cap and Bells (stanza 44) : 

"She was born at midnight in an Indian wild; 
Her mother's screams with the striped tiger's blent. 
While the torch-bearing slaves a halloo sent 
Into the jungles; and her palanquin. 
Rested amid the desert's dreariment, " etc. 

The name of Keats suggests another phase of Oriental verse; 
that concerned with the luxury of the senses. In Keats himself 
one may find such passages as these : 

"Manna and dates, in argosy transferred 
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one. 
From silken Samarcand to cedared Lebanon. "^*^^ 

" I saw Osirian Egypt kneel adown 
Before the vine- wreath crown! 
I saw parched Abyssinia rouse and sing 
To the silver cymbals' ring! 
I saw the whelming vintage hotly pierce 
Old Tartary the fierce! 
The kings of Ind their jewel-sceptres vail 
And from their treasures scatter pearled hail."^*^* 

The delight of the senses dominates most of the Oriental flower 



105. The Curse of Kehama; Canto XXIII. 

106. Modern Painters; Part IV, Chapter 6. 

107. The Eve of St. Agnes; stanza 30. 

108. Endymion; Book IV. 



90 Univer.nty of Katisas Humanistic Studies 

passages, fruit passages, and jewel passages. There is appeal to 
the sense of taste in the frequent mention of cinnamon, cloves, 
coffee, and Persian wines. For the sense of touch there are silken 
garments, soft rugs, and the hard polished surfaces of gems. 
Sounds range from the tinkle of lutes to the war-shouts of Moslem 
armies. For scents there are the delicate perfumes of the rose, 
and of frankincense, the odors borne by winds that pass bj' Arabian 
groves or the cedars of Lebanon, and the pungent odors from the 
animals of the jungle. In the diction of Sir William Jones the 
adjectives "golden'', "silver", and "silken" are in steady service. 
His color vocabulary includes such words as "crimson ", "saffron ", 
and "roseate". He is fond of all that dazzles, or glows, or gleams, 
or glitters, or sparkles, or blazes. In many poets one reads of the 
wealth of the mines of Golconda, of the i)earls of Ceylon and the 
gold of Ophir, of costly copies of the Koran, of richly decorated 
armor, of luxurious temples and palaces. These values from the 
Orient are not new or newly discovered in our ]>eriod. Langhorne 
writes of the Song of Solomon, "This beautiful and luxuriant 
marriage pastoral of Solomon, is the only perfect form of the Ori- 
ental eclogue that has survived the ruins of time ", etc.^^^ Medieval 
literature had its Oriental luxiuy as well as its asceticism. The 
Virgin Mary is praised in extravagant terms of the senses in some 
of the English religious dramas. According to the Minnesinger 
Konrad of WUrzburg, she was "exalted like the cyi)ress in Zion 
and the cedar on Lebanon; . . . her sweet fragrance is pleasanter 
than balsam and musk".^^" This note of sensuous and often un- 
restrained luxury, sometimes passing into a "barbaric splendor", 
was more or less offensive not only to the Puritan, but also to the 
classicist. Perhaps there is no other note so distinctive of Orien- 
talism in English poetry, if Orientalism is considered as a style, 
and not as a "field". 

The humanitarian interest of the early Nineteenth Century 
found satisfaction in three closely related Orientalized themes — 
the hatred of tyranny, the love of liberty, and the spirit of service. 
The English poets often considered the East as a region of slavery. 
Superstition and the cruelty of monarchs oppressed all those weak 
in mind or body. The submission of Greece to the Turk Mas not 
only a sentimental subject, but a practical, political, and ethical 



109. Edition of Collins cited In Appendix; p. 129. 

110. See Hosmer; p. 101. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 91 

interest. If Byron died for the cause of freedom, so, in other ways, 
did some of the reformers and the servants of the Church. Poems 
and passages on the horrors of the slave-trade are numerous, and 
written with enthusiasm for reform. The tributes to Bishop 
Heber and Bishop Middleton seem inspired by genuine affection 
and approval. Of the work of Middleton in India, Praed writes, 

"Soon, at his bidding. Love, the beauteous child. 
Returned; rich plenty blessed the land's increase; 
Staid Order, gentle Peace, 
Twin-born of Justice, smiled. "^^^ 

In many poets the love of liberty was stronger than national 
patriotism. In The Warning Voice Southey claims that it was 
England who began the redemption of Africa, who brought "peace 
and equity" to India; but Campbell does not hesitate to give 
severe criticism of England's management in India. The tenth 
avatar of Brama will occur, 

"To pour redress on India's injured realm. ""-^ 

Again, Coleridge, in France: An Ode, expresses love for England 
only in so far as she stood for liberty among all peoples. In an 
early poem, written within our period, Tennyson gives in his 
gentle manner a clear expression of the same spirit. If England 
should cease to be the guardian of the nations, then, 

"Tho' Power should make from land to land 
The name of Britain trebly great — 
Tho' every channel of the State 
Should fill and choke with golden sand — 

Yet waft me from the harbor- mouth. 
Wild wind! I seek a warmer sky, 
And I will see before I die 
The palms and temples of the South.""' 

For him there was no need. The palms and temples of the South 
remained mere delights of imagination. He lived to write with 
pride, not even yet without the warning note of one who loved 
liberty before country, of 



111. Hindostan. 

112. The Pleasures of Hope; Part 1. 

113. " You ask m< why. thotifih ill at ease." 



9S University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

"Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes 
For ever-broadening England, and her throne 
In our vast Orient . . . ""^ 



114. The Idylls of the King: To the Queen. 



APPENDIX 

I. Bibliographical Notes 
A. Poems and Passages 

The following pages gives the chief data on which this study is 
based. All the verse for which titles are given has been examined, 
unless the title is enclosed in brackets. No attempt has been 
made to cover the entire field of English verse between 1740 and 
1840. Of the dramas, particularly, only a few have been reviewed. 
Though Miss Conant's work is mainly concerned with prose, she 
names a few poems not accessible for this study. It is believed, 
however, that sufficient verse has been examined to justify the 
arrangement, the proportions, and the general interpretation of 
the foregoing chapters. Much material has been gathered which 
could not be used in the present paper. 

The arrangement in the pages below is as follows : 

Under "I" are placed bibliographical references sufficient to 
indicate the sources. 

Under "II" are placed such poems as are considered Oriental. 
Classification is not as simple as it might seem. In addition to 
poems clearly Oriental, it has been the intention to include all 
those which deal, as v^holes, with the gypsy, and the Westerner in 
the Orient; and those in which the chief imagery is Eastern, what- 
ever the theme. Poems that are merely "Oriental" in style, in 
the sense noted above on page 7 are not included, except in a 
few examples. 

In Kirke White's Sonnet IX, the theme is religious, but the 
chief imagery is drawn from the East. In Procter's Amelia Went- 
worth, the situation concerns the departure of "Charles" for 
India, but the spirit of the poem is English, as are the characters. 
The Fatal Curiosity has important Oriental motivation, but the 
play as a whole is famous as an early English domestic tragedy. 

93 



94 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

The value of the present study, it is hoped, lies in its emphasis 
on the wide diffusion of Oriental taste during the period under 
discussion. Much remains to be done in English Orientalism, even 
for the Eighteenth Century. We should have more critical 
definitions, and more adequate bibliographical and chronological 
surveys. 

Under "III" are noted poems with passages which seem worthy 
of record. The data given for some of the minor poets are more 
complete than those for some of the masters. 

Under "IV" have been placed such notes as did not seem to 
belong under the other numbers. 

Mark Akenside, 1721-1770. 
I. Complete Poetical Works. Knight and Son, London, n. d. 
III. The Pleasures of the Imagination. 

Book II. — "Doth virtue deign to inhabit" sq. 
Book III. — "To Egypt therefore" sq. 
The Virtuoso.— VI- VII. 

John Armstrong, 1709-1779. 
I. Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green. With 
Memoirs and Critical Dissertations. The Text edited 
by Charles Cowden Clarke. Edinburgh, 1868. 
III. The Art of Preserving Health. 

Book II, — "Girt by the burning zone, " sq. 
— "Here from the desert" sq. 
—"What does not fade?" sq. 
Imitations of Shakespeare. 

["Into the valleys.] And as rude hurricanes," sq. 
"The glossy fleeces" sq. 

Edwin Atherstone, 1788-1872, 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. II. 
II. A Dramatic Sketch. 
[The Fall of Nineveh.] 

Joanna Baillie, 1762-1851, 
I. Complete Poetical Works. First American Edition, 
Philadelphia, 1852. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 90 

II. The Bride. 

Constantine Paleologus: A Tragedy. 
Lord John of the East. 
Sir Maurice: a Ballad. 
Ill yhc Martyr. — Orceres, a Parthian prince, is an important 
character. 
William Wallace.— XCI. 

Anna Letitia Barbauld, 1743-1825. 
I. Poems in Frost, 1838. 
III. Hymn to Content. — Stanza G. 

Very slight touches in other poems. 

Richard Harris Barham, 1788-1845. 
I. Ingoldsby Legend?;. London. (1907.) 
II. The Ingoldsby Penance. 
III. The Auto-da-Fe. 
The Cenotaph. 
The Old Woman Clothed in Gray. 

William Barnes, 1801-1886. 
I. Select Poems Chosen and Edited by Thomas Hardy. I^on- 
don, 1908. 

James Beattie, 1735-1803. 
I. Poetical Works. London, n. d. Aldine Poets. 
III. The Battle of the Pygmies and Cranes. — Passim. 

The Minstrel.— Book I, 59. 
I\'. In a note to his translation of the fourth eclogue of Vergil, 
Beattie speaks of the "resemblance it bears in many places 
to the Oriental manner". 

Thomas Lovell Beddoes, 1803-1849. 
I. Poetical Works. Edited, with a Memoir, by Edmund 
Gosse. London, 1890. Two vols. The Temple Library. 
II. TheLast Man;— A Crocodile. 

The Romance of the Lily. 
III. Death's Jest-Book; or The Fool's Tragedy. 
Act I. — Scenes 2-4. 



96 University of K(msas Humanistic Studies 

Act III. — Scene I. 

Scene 3. — Song by Isbrand; and much of the scene. 

Act IV. — Scene 4. — "Harpagus, hast thou salt" sq. 

— ^Ziba: "Come; we'll struggle," sq. 

Act V. — Scene 4. — Ziba: "Here's wine of Egypt," sq. 

And all passages in which "Ziba; an Egyptian slave" 

appears. 
The Second Brother. — Touches; e. g., in III, 1. 
Torrismond; I, 2 — "This wine was pressed" «g.; and passim. 
IV. Beddoes has little genuine Orientalism, except as noted 
above, but much of his verse is colored by a mystical, 
exotic quality which is somewhat allied with Oriental taste, 
as the Romantic poets expressed it. 

Thomas Blacklock, 1721-1791. 

I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
IV. An Ode to a Young Gentleman Bound for Guinea is perhaps 
about as near as this poet approaches to an Oriental poem. 

Robert Blair, 1699-1746. 

I. Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer. With 
Lives, etc., by the Rev. George Gilfillan. Edinburgh, 
London, and Dublin, 1854. 
III. The Grave. — "The tapering pyramid, " sq. 

William Blake, 1757-1828. 

I. Poetical Works. Edited and Annotated by Edwin J. Ellis. 

London, 1906. Two. vols. 
II. The Song of Los. 
Africa. 
Asia. 
The Little Black Boy. 
The Tiger. 

III. Jerusalem. 

Chapter III. — "Egypt is the eight steps within," sq. (58) 
— "Europe and Asia and Africa and Amer- 
ica," sq. 
And numerous brief passages. 



Oshorite: Oriental Diction and Theme 97 

IV. Blake's peculiar symbolical treatment of the Orient gives 
him a unique place among the Oriental poets. One passage 
in Jerusalem, however, is a simple geographical list of coun- 
tries. 

Robert Bloomfield, 1766-1823, 
I. The Farmer's Boy. In Frost, 1838. 

William Lisle Bowles, 1762-1852. 

I. Poetical Works. With Memoir, etc., by the Rev. George 
Gilfillan. Edinburgh, London, and Dublin, 1855. Two 
vols. 
II. Abba Thule's Lament for His Son Prince Le Boo. 
The Battle of the Nile. 
The Dying Slave. 
The Egyptian Tomb. 
The Gipsy's Tent. 
The Harp of Hoel. 
The Last Song of Camoens. 
Song of the Cid. 
III. BanwellHill. 

Part First. — ["The dread event they speak.] What 

monuments" sq. 

Part Second. — "Hosannah to the car of light!" sq. 
The Grave of Howard. — "Teach to the roving Tartar's 
savage clan" sq. 

Hope: An Allegorical Sketch. — Stanzas 5 and 18. 
Saint John in Patmos. Part Second. — Stranger: "Was 
not the hand" sq. 

Saint Michael's Mount. — "Thee the Phoenician," sq. 
The Spirit of Discovery by Sea. 

Book I. — " He said ; and up to the unclouded height" sq. 

A good deal in Books II- V. 
The Spirit of Navigation. 

The Sylph of Summer. — ["Attendant on their march: — ] 
the wild Simoom," sq. 
IV. For a study of the heavier type of reflective and didactic 
verse dealing with the Orient, Bowles offers a rather sur- 
prising amount of material. 



98 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

John Bowbing, 1792-1872. 
I. Matins and Vespers: With Hymns and Occasional Devo- 
tional Pieces. Boston, 1844. 
II. [Russian Anthology.] 

[Servian Popular Poetry.] 
[Specimens of the Polish Poets.] 
IV. A brief passage on the mirage of Sahara in Matins and 
Vespers. — See Dictionary of National Biography. 

Samuel Boyse, 1708-1749. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIV. 
II. Love and Majesty. 
Ill, ToSemanthe: Ode. — Last stanza. 

The Triumphs of Nature. — ' 'In which, of form Chinese, "sq. 
The Vision of Patience: An Allegorical poem. — General 
theme, and stanza 24. 

Henry Brooke, 1706-1783. 
I. Gustavus Vasa. In Inchbald's British Theatre, vol. VII. 

Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 
II. Constantia; or The Man of Law's Tale. Modernized from 
Chaucer. 

Jerusalem Delivered. (Translation of Books I-III.) 
III. Universal Beauty. Book IV. — '* Now hurried on Sarmatian 
tempests roll;" sq. 

John Brown, 1715-1766 
I. Barbarossa. In Inchbald's British Theatre, vol. XV. 
II. The scene of this play is in Algiers. Some Oriental char- 
acters and diction. 

Isaac Hawkins Browne, 1705-1760. 
I. De Animi Immortalitate. In Chalmers, vol. XV^II, p. 622. 
III. Liber Primus. — "Quid memorem fluctu" sq. 

Robert Burns, 1759-1786. 
I. Works. Edited by Wm. Scott Douglas. London, 1891. 
Five vols. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 99 

II. TheAiildMan. 

"One Queen Artemisia." 
Evan Banks. 
IV. Burns states that The Auld Man was written for an "East 
Indian air". There are fragmentary touches in other 
poems than those named. 

John Byrom, 1691-1763. 
I. Poems in Chahners, vol. XV. 
II. Epistle to J. Bl. k. n., Esq. Occasioned by a Dispute Con- 
cerning the Food of John the Baptist. 

III. The Country Fellows and the Ass: Spoken on the Same 
Occasion. — "In some tamed elephants" sg. 

IV. The Epistle named above is one of the numerous BibUcal 
poems of the period with some coloring which might be 
called Oriental; though in general it is dry and didactic. 

George Gordon, Lord Byron, 1788-1824. 
I. Poetical Works. Edited, with a Memoir, by Ernest Hartley 

Coleridge. London, 1905. 
II. The Bride of Abydos: A Turkish Tale. 
The Cliain I Gave: From the Turkish. 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. — Canto II. 
The Corsair: A Tale. 
Don Juan. — Chiefly Cantos II-X. 
The Giaour: A Fragment of a Turkish Tale. 
Hebrew Melodies. 

The Destruction of Sennacherib. 

On Jordan's Banks. 

The Wild Gazelle. 
The Island; or, Christian and His Comrades. 
Lara: A Tale. 

Maid of Athens, Ere We Part. 
On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year. 
Sardanapalus : A Tragedy. 
The Siege of Corinth. 

Stanzas Composed During a Thunder Storm. 
Stanzas : To a Hindoo Air. 

Stanzas Written in Passing the Ambracian Gulf. 
To Eliza. 



100 University of Kansas Humanistic Stvdies 

Translation of a Romaic Love Song. 

Translation of the Famous Greek War-Song. 

Translation of the Romaic Song, etc. 

A Very Mournful Ballad on the Siege and Conquest of 

Alhama. 

Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos. 

III. Ode on Venice.— III. 

Brief passages or touches in many other poems, 

IV. There is what might be considered Oriental coloring in Cain 
and in Heaven and Earth. 

Richard Owen Cambridge, 1717-1802. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
II. TheFakeer: A Tale. 

III. Learning: A Dialogue between Dick and Ned. — "There, 
Ned, a Brahmin may you see" sq. 

The Scribleriad. — Book I. 

IV. Cambridge was interested in the study of East Indian affairs. 

Thomas Campbell, 1777-1844. 
I. Complete Poetical Works. Edited by J. Logic Robertson. 

Oxford University Press, 1907. 
II. The Dead Eagle. 

Epistle from Algiers to Horace Smith. 

Lines on the Departure of Emigrants for New South Wales. 
Lines [on] the Day of Victory in Egypt, 1809. 
Lines on Poland. 
The Power of Russia. 
The Ritter Bann. 

Song of the Colonists Departing for New Zealand. 
Song of the Greeks. 
Stanzas on the Battle of Navarino. 
The Turkish Lady. 
The Wounded Hussar. 
III. The Pleasures of Hope. Parti. — "In Libyan groves, " to 
the end. 

George Canning, 1770-1827. 
I. Poems in Morley: Parodies and Other Burlesque Pieces. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 101 

II, The Progress of Man. Twenty-third Canto. On Marriage. 

(With EUis.) 
IV. See also under Frere. 

William Carey, 1761-1834. 
IV. A translation of part of the Ramayuna by Carey and Joshua 
Marshman is reviewed by Foster. (See below, p. 132, Foster, 
Sanscrit Literature.) Carey is credited with an edition of 
the Ramayuna in three volumes, 1806-1810. 

Henry Francis Cary, 1792-1844. 
II. [Ode to General Kosciusko.] 

James Cawthorn, 1719-1761. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIV. 

III. The Antiquarians: A Tale. 

— "Asserted that it came from Tyre:" sq. 

— "It came! says he," sq. 
The Birth and Education of Genius: A Tale. — "But, such 
the fate," sq. 

Life Unhappy because We Use it Improperly: A Moral 
Essay. — "Breathes it in Ceylon's" sq. 
Nobility : A Moral Essay. — "In Turkey, " sq. And passim. 
Of Taste. — "Of late, 'tis true," sq. 

The Vanity of Human Enjoyments: An Ethic Epistle. — 
"Tell me, O visier!" sq. 

IV. The passage in Of Taste is one of the best of the period on 
matters Oriental in English garden and parlor ornament. 

Thomas Chatterton, 1752-1770. 
I. Poetical Works. Boston, 1879. Two vols, in one. British 

Poets. 
II. The Death of Nicou : An x\frican Eclogue. 
%\ Heccar and Gaira: An African Eclogue. 
I Narva and Mored : An African Eclogue. 

III. Englysh Metamorphosis. — I, 1. 

IV. The Oriental element in Chatterton is interesting by way 
of contrast with the work for which he is famous. It is 
practically limited to the Eclogues. 



10£ University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Charles Churchill, 1731-1764. 
I, Poetical Works. With jNIemoir, etc., by the Rev. George 

Gilfillan. Edinburgh, London, and Dublin, 1855. 
II. The Farewell. 
III. The Ghost. 

Book I. — "At its first rise," sq. 
Book III. — '* 'Sure as that cane, " sq. 
Gotham. — "But whither do these grave reflections"*^. 
The Times. — "Nor stop we here" sq. 

Hartley Coleridge, 1796-1849. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. III. 
II. Address to Certain Gold Fishes. 

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1772-1834. 
I. Complete Poetical Works. Edited by Ernest Hartley Col- 
eridge. The Clarendon Press, 1912. Two vols. 
II. Kubla Khan. 

Lewti, or the Circassian Love-Chaunt. 
Remorse: A Tragedy. 

III. The Destiny of Nations: A Vision. — "As ere from Lieule- 
Oaive's vapoury head" sq. 

Religious Musings. — "O fiends of superstition!" sq. 
— "Fitliest depictured "^g. 

IV. The Bohemian element in The Piccolomini may be noted. 
There are a few very slight Oriental touches — by Coleridge 
and Southey — in The Fall of Robespierre. 

William Collins, 1721-1759. 

I. Poetical Works. With . . . Biographical and Critical Notes 
by the Rev. Alexander Dyce. London, 1827. 

II. Oriental Eclogues. 

Selim; or. The Shepherd's Moral. 
Hassan; or, The Camel-driver. 
Abra; or. The Georgian Sultana. 
Agib and Secander; or, The Fugitives. 
• IV. The Oriental element in Collins is of interest in contrast 
with the predominant Celtic and Grecian elements. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 103 

Georg?: Colman the Younger, 1762-1836. 
I. The Iron Cliest. In Indibnld's British Theatre, vol. XXI. 
The Mountaineers. In the same vol. 
III. The Mountaineers. — Moorish element passim. 

John Gilbert Cooper, 1723-1769. 
1. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XV. 
II. Ver-Vert; or. The Nunnery Parrot. — Theme, and touches 
passim . 

III. The Power of Harmony. — Book I, passim, 

IV. Slight touches in some other poems. 

Nathaniel Cotton, 1705-1788. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
II. An Invocation of Happiness: After the Oriental Manner 
of Speech. 

III. Visions in Verse; for the Entertainment and Instruction of 
Younger Minds. Pleasure. Vision II. — "Shall Siam's ele- 
phant sup})ly " sq. 

IV. Oriental diction pas.sini in other poems. 

William Cowper, 1731-1800. 
I. Works. Comprising his Poems, Correspondence, «and Trans- 
lations. With a Life of the Author by the Editor, Robert 
Southey. London, 1854. Eight vols. Bohn's Standard 
Library. Verse in vols. V and VI. 

Unpublished and L^ncollected Poems. Edited by Thomas 
Wright. London, 1900. Cameo Series. 
II. Epigram. (Printed in the Northampton Mercury.) 

The liove of the World Reproved; or Hypocrisy Detected. 
The Morning Dream. 
The Negro's Complaint. 
Pity for Poor Africans. 

Reciprocal Kindness the Primary Law of Nature. (Trans- 
lated from Vincent Bourne.) 
Sonnet to William Wilberforce, Esq. 

Sweet Meat has Sour Sauce; or, The Slave-Trader in the 
Dumps. 
III. Adam: A Sacred I>rama. Translated from the Italian of 
Gio. Battista Andreini. — This has passages rather richly 



10 Jf. University of Kansas Hnmamstic Studies 

colored, which might be considered "Oriental" in style. 
See especially, II, 6; V, 1 and 5. 

Anti-Thelyphthora. A Tale, in Verse. — "Ye fair Circas- 
sians" sq. 

Charity. — "When Cook — lamented" sq. 
Expostulation. — "Hast thou, though suckled at fair Free- 
dom's breast," sq. 

Montes Glaciales, in Oceano Germanico Natantes. 
On Mrs. Montagu's Feather Hangings. 
On the Ice Islands seen Floating in the German Ocean. 
On the Platonic Idea, as It Was Understood by Aristotle. 
The Task. 

Books I, II, III, and V. — Touches. 

Book VI. — "Nebaioth, and the flocks of Kedar" sq. 
IV. Genuine Orientalism is very rare in Cowper. His human- 
itarian interest produced a number of poems on slavery, 
listed above. Many other poems contain slight fragments 
of Oriental diction or reference; among them An Epistle to 
Joseph Hill, Esq., The Critics Chastised, In a Letter to the 
Same (C. P., Esq.), The Progress of Error, The Retired Cat, 
Table Talk, Translations of the Latin and Italian Poems of 
Milton, and Truth. 

George Crabbe, 1754-1832. 
I. Poetical Works. With His Letters and Journals, and His 

Life, by His Son. London, 1834. Eight vols. 
II. The Hall of Justice. 

Woman. 
III. The Borough. 

Letter IX. — "Lo! where on that huge anchor" sq. 
Letter X. — "When Bruce, that dauntless traveller, " sq. 
The Parish Register. 

Part HI. — "A Captain thither, rich from India came, "sq. 
Posthumous Tales. 

Tale I. — "But there were fictions wild" sq. 
Tale XIX. — "Arabian Nights, and Persian Tales," sq. 
Tales. 

Tale X. — "And there a Gipsy-tribe" sq. 
Tale XI. — " 'Tis thus a sanguine reader" sq. 
Tale XVI.— "The CaHph Harun " sq. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 105 

Tales of the Hall. 

Book IV. — '"Thou hast sailed far, dear Brother,'" sq. 
The World of Dreams.— Stanzas 28-29. 

George Croly, 1780-1860. 
I, Poems in Frost, 1843. 
II. On the Ruins of Mesolonghi. 

The Song of Antar: From the Arabic. 
III. Illustrations of Napoleon. 

I. Napoleon at St. Helena. — "That Polar snows" sq. 

Richard Cumberland, 1732-1811. 
I. The Carmelite. In Inchbald's Modern Theatre, vol. V. 
III. On the Crusades and the Saracen, passim. 

George Darley, 1795-1846. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. III. 
III. Sylvia; or. The May Queen. — A slight touch or two. 

Erasmus Darwin, 1731-1802. 
I. Poetical Works. London, 1806. Three vols. 
III. The Economy of Vegetation. 

Canto I. — "Pass, where with palmy plumes" sq. 
Canto II. — "Thus caverned round" sq. 
Canto III. — "Sailing in air," sq. 
Canto IV. — "Sylphs! your bold myriads" sq. 
— "Pleased shall the Sage," sq. 
— "So from his shell" sq. 
The Loves of the Plants. 

Canto I. — "Where Java's isle," sq. 

Canto II. — "Papyra, throned upon the bank of Nile,"5g. 

— "Two Sister-Nymphs" sq. 
Canto III. — "So, where Palmyra" sq. 
— " Where seas of glass " «g. 
— "So the sad mother" sq. 
Canto IV. — "Amphibious Nymph," sq. 

— "So, when the Nightingale" sq. 
The Origin of Society. 
Canto I. — Touches. 
Canto III. — "Where Egypt's pyramids" sq. 



106' University of Kafisat; Humanistic Studiee 

Canto IV. — "Led by Volition" sq. 

— "So when Arabia's Bird," sq. 

Robert Dodsley, 1703-1764. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XV. 
II. Rex et Pontifex. — The chief Orientalism is in the .stage 
directions. 

Sir Francis Hastings Doylf, 1810-1888. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. IV. 
II. The Mameluke Charge. 
Mehreb Khan. 
The Private of the Buffs. 
The Red Thread of Honour. 
IV. These poems were written prior to 1840, according to the 
sketch of Doyle in Miles. 

John Dyer, 1700-1758. 
I. Poetical Works of Armstrong, Dyer, and Green. With 
Memoirs and Critical Dissertations. The Text edited by 
Charles Cowden Clarke. Edinl)urgh, 1868. 
III. The Fleece. 

Book II. — "The glossy fleeces now of prime esteem" sq. 
Book III. — "Or the Cathayan's, " sq. 
— "Far-distant Thibet" sq. 
Book IV. — "See the dark spirit of tyrannic power" sq. 
Passim in other parts of the poem. 
The Ruins of Rome. — Passi7n. 

George Ellis, 1753-1815. 
I. Poems in Morley : Parodies and Other Burlesque Pieces. 
II. The Duke of Benevento : A Tale. 
The Power of Faith : A Tale. 

III. Loves of the Triangles. — "In Afric's schools," sq. 
Ode by Nathaniel Weaxall. — Largely Orientalized. 

IV. See also under Frere. 

William Falconer, 1732-1769. 
I. Poetical Works. With a Memoir by John Mitford. Lon- 
don, 1895. Aldine Poets. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 107 

II. The Shipwreck. 

IV. This poem has its scenes in the Eastern Mediterranean 
region. It has little true Oriental style or subject. 

Francis Fawkes, 17!21-1777. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVI. 

III. Claudian's Old Man. — One couplet. 
Fragments of Menander. — A few touches. 
Mechanical Solution of the Propagation of Yawning. — 
Touches. 

Robert Fergusson, 1750-1774. 
I. Poetical Works. Edited by Robert Ford. Paisley, 1905. 

IV. Fergusson has less Oriental element than Burns. Perhaps 
Tea is about as near as he comes to an Oriental poem. 

John Hookam Frere, 1769-1846. 
I. Works in Verse and Prose. Now first Collected. With a 
Memoir by His Nephews, W. E. and Sir Bartle Frere. Lon- 
don, 1872. Two vols. 

Poems in Morley: Parodies and Other Burlesque Pieces. 
II. Lines on the Death of Richard Edward Frere. 
The Slavery of Greece. 
Tablet in Roy den C'hurch. 
Translations from the Poem of the Cid. 
Translation of a Letter (in Oriental Characters) from 
Bobba-Dara-Adul-Phoola, Dragoman to the Expedition, to 
Neek-Awl-Aretchid-Kooes, Secretary to the Tunisian Em- 
bassy. — With Canning, Ellis, and Gifford (?). 
III. Elegj', or Dirge. — (With Canning and Ellis.) 
Fragment II. 
Hexameters. 

King Arthur and His Round Tal)Ie. 
Loves of the Triangles. (With Canning and Ellis.) 

Richard Glover, 1712-1785. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 

III. The Athena id. — Passim. 
Leonidas. 

Book III. — "Not from the hundred brazen gates" sq. 



108 University oj Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Book IV. — "The noble dames of Persia" sq. 

— And much of the Book. 
Classical Orientalism throughout the poem. 
London; or, The Progress of Commerce. 
— "Beneath the Libyan skies, " sq. 
— "Now solitude and silence" sq. 
— " .... though Mahomet could league" sq. 

Oliver Goldsmith, 1728-1774. 
I. Works. Edited by J. M. W. Gibbs. London, 1894-1907. 
Five vols. Bohn's Standard Library. 
II. Prologue to Zoheide. 

III. The Traveller. — "The naked negro," sq. 

IV. Goldsmith's Orientalism is chiefly in his prose. 

James Grahame, 1765-1811. 
I. Poems in Frost, 1838. 

III. The Sabbath. — "But what the loss of country " sq. 

James Grainger, 1723-1767. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIV. 
III. The Sugar-Cane. — Extensive treatment of the Negro, and 
of Africa in connection; especially in Books III and IV. 
Book IV opens with an invocation to the " Genius of Afric." 

IV, This poem may be considered a link between Oriental and 
Occidental interests, based on real history, not mere fancy. 

Thomas Gray, 1716-1771. 
I. Works. Edited by Edmund Gosse. London, 1884. Four 
vols. 
III. The Alliance of Education and Government. — "Oft o'er 

the trembling Nations" sq. 
iV. Very slight touches in Hymn to Ignorance and the transla- 
tion from Tasso. It is interesting to recall the Occidental 
reference in the Progress of Poesy. 

Arthur H. Hallam, 1811-1833. 
I. Poems, etc. Edited by Richard Le Gallienne. London and 

New York, 1893. 
II. Timbuctoo. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 109 

III. Meditative Fragments, VI. 
Scene at Rome. 

William Hamilton, 1704-1754. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XV. 
II. Mithridates. 

IV. Touches here and there in other poems. 

Walter Harte, 1709-1774. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVI. 

III. Essay on Reason. — "Midst Tartary's deserts," sq. 
Eulogius; or. The Charitable Mason. 

The Vision of Death. — "Ynoisa, Sanchia," sq. 

IV. All three of these pieces are Divine Poems; Biblical in gen- 
eral tone. 

HallHartson, (?) -1773. 
I. The Countess of Salisbury: A Tragedy. In Inchbald's 
British Theatre, vol. XVI. 
III. Brief passages in I, 1, and IV, 1. 

Robert Stephen Hawker, 1803-1875. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. III. 

III. The Quest of the Sangreal. — Touches. 

Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta, 1783-1826. 

IV. Heber is intimately connected with English Orientalism, 
through his life work, and through his prose. For parodies 
of his famous missionary hymn, see Hamilton : Parodies, etc. 

Felicia Dorothea Hemans, 1794-1835. 
I. Poetical Works. London and New York, 1891. The Im- 
perial Poets. 
II. The Abencerrage. 

Attraction of the East. 

The Bird's Release. 

The Burial in the Desert. 

The Caravan in the Desert. 

Casabianca. 

The Crusader's Return. 



110 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

The Crusader's War-song. 

The Flower of the Desert. 

An Hour of Romance. 

The Indian City. 

Ivan the Czar. 

The Last Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra. 

The Last Constantine. 

Marius among the Ruins of Carthage. 

Moorish Bridal Song. 

Moorish Gathering-Song. 

The Mourner for the Barmecides. 

Ode on the Defeat of King Sebastian of Portugal. 

The Palm-tree. 

The Rio Verde Song. 

Sebastian of Portugal: A Dramatic Fragment. 

Song: "Oh! bear me to the groves of palm. " 

Song Founded upon an Arabian Anecdote. 

Songs of the Cid. 

The Suliote Mother. 

To the Memory of Ileber. 

The Traveller at the Source of the Nile. 

The Wife of Asdrubal. 

The Zegri Maid. 

III. The Domestic Affections. — Lo! through the waste," sq. 
England and Spain. — "Hail, Albion, hail! to thee has fate 
denied" sq. 

Modern Greece.— Especially XI, XII, XXXI-XXXVII, 
LXXXIII. 

A Tale of the Secret Tribunal. Part II. — "For, long a cap- 
tive" sq. 

IV. Mrs. Hemans is a prominent Oriental poet, by virtue of the 
number of her poems if not by virtue of quality. She prob- 
ably expresses as fully as any minor j)oet of the period the 
sentimental values found in contemplation of the Moors 
and the Crusader, the pathetic appeal of the desert, and 
some other themes. Oriental words and phrases are scat- 
tered through many poems not listed above. 

Aaron Hill, 1685-1750. 
II. [Daraxes.] 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 111 

IV. For comment on this operatic piece, see Dorothy Brewster: 
Aaron Hill, and Jeannette Marks: English Pastoral Drama. 

James Hogg, 1770-1835. 
I. Works of the Ettrick Shepherd. A New Edition. With a 
Memoir of the x'Vuthor by the Rev. Thomas Thomson. Lon- 
don, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, 1866. Two vols. 
II. Arabian Song. 
The Gypsies. 
III. CaryO'Kean. 

The Curse of the Laureate. — Stanzas 5 and 8. 

The Descent of Love. 

The Field of Waterloo. 

Sacred Melodies. — Especially the Hose of Sharon. 

Wallace. — One couplet. 

John Home, 17^22-1808. 
I. Douglass: A Tragedy. In Inchbald's British Theatre, vol. 
XVI. 
III. IV, 3.— "Small is the skill" sq. 

Thomas Hood, 1798-1845. 
I. Poetical Works. Boston, 1880. Five vols. British Poets. 
II. Address to Mr. Cross, of Exeter Change, on the Death of 
the Elephant. 
The Broken Dish. 
The China-Mender. 
I'm Going to Bombay. 
The Kangaroos : A Fable. 
Lines to a Lady on her Departure for India. 
The Monkey-Martyr: A Fable. 
Ode to the Cameleopard. 
Poem from the Polish. 

Remonstratory Ode from the Elephant at Exeter Change. 
The Stag-eyed Lady: A Moorish Tale. 
A True Story. ("Whoe'er has seen.") 
III. Miss Kilmansegg. — Slight touches passim. 

John Hoole, 1727-1803. 
I. Translation of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. In Chalmers, 
vol. XXI. 



112 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Translation of Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered. In the same vol. 
IV. Many of the Oriental words and phrases in these transla- 
tions follow the Italian closely; but Hoole sometimes flat- 
tens, sometimes heightens the Oriental effects of the 
original diction. 

Richard Henry Horne, 1803-1884. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. III. 
II. Pelters of Pyramids. 

James Henry Leigh Hunt, 1784-1859. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. II. 

II. Abou ben Adhem and the Angel. 
The Nile. 

Richard Jago, 1715-1781. 

I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 

IV. Only single words and slight phrases noted, 

SoAME Jenyns, 1704-1787. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 
III. On the Immortality of the Soul: Translated from the 
Latin of I. H. Browne. Book I. — "Why should I mention 
those," sq. 

Robert Jephson, 1736-1803. 
I. The Count of Narbonne: A Tragedy. In Inchbald's 
British Theatre, vol. XX. 
III. Brief passages in II, 1, and III, 2. 

Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784. 
I. Works. With an Essay on. His Life and Genius by Arthur 
Murphy. A New Edition. London, Glasgow, and Dublin, 
1824. Twelve vols. Verse in vol. I. 

II. Irene: A Tragedy. 

III. Septem .States. 

Touches in Messia, and To Stella. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 113 

Sir William Jones, 1746-1794, 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
II. A Chinese Ode. 

Paraphrased. 

Verbal Translation. 
Elegia Arabica. 

The Enchanted Fruit; or. The Hindoo Wife: An Ante- 
diluvian Tale. 

Ex Ferdusii Poetae Persici Poemate Heroico. 
From the Persian Poem of Hatifi. 

In the Measure of the Original. 

Transposition. 
A Hymn to Camdeo. 
A Hymn to Ganga. 
A Hymn to Indra. 
A Hymn to Lacshmi. 
A Hymn to Narayena. 
A Hymn to Sereswaty. 
A Hymn to Surya. 
To Lady Jones : From the Arabic. 
Two Hymns to Pracriti. 

The Hymn to Bhavani. 

The Hymn to Durga. 
Ode Arabica. 

An Ode of Jami : In the Persian Form and Measure. 
Ode Persica. 
Altera. 

The Palace of Fortune: An Indian Tale. 
A Persian Song of Hafiz. 

Plassey-Plain : A Ballad Addressed to Lady Jones. 
The Seven Fountains : An Eastern Allegory. 
Solima: An Arabian Eclogue. 

A Song from the Persian, Paraphrased in the Measure of 
the Original. 

A Turkish Ode of Mesihi. 
The Same: In Imitation of the Perviligium Veneris. 

John Keats, 1795-1821. 
I. Poetical Works and Other Writings. Edited by H. B. For- 
man. London, 1883. Four vols. 



lUt University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

II. The Cap and Bells. 
Lamia. 
Sonnet to the Nile. 

III. Endymion. 

Eve of St. Agnes. 

Hyperion. 

Isabella. 

Otho the Great. 

IV. There are phrases and brief passages in other poems. 

John Keble, 1792-1866. 
I. The Christian Year. London and New York, 1894. The 

Golden Treasury Series. 
II. Monday in Whitsun-Week. 
III. Conversion of St. Paul. — Stanza I. 
Second Sunday after Christmas. 
Second Sunday after Easter. 
Third Sunday in Lent. — Stanzas 3, 4. 

Charles Lamb, 1775-1834. 
I. Works. Edited by E. V. Lucas. London, 1903-4. Seven 

vols. 
II. The Gipsy's Malison. 
Queen Oriana's Dream. 
The Young Catechist. 
III. The Wife's Trial. Last scene. — "The scene is laid in the 
East." sq. And passim. 

John Langhorne, 1735-1779. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVI. 

II. Fables of Flora.— Fable VI: The Queen of the Meadow 
and the Crown Imperial. 
III. The Country Justice: Introduction. — The Gypsy-Life. 

Matthew Gregory Lewis, 1775-1818. 
I. Life and Correspondence . . . with Many Pieces in Prose 
and Verse never before Published. London, 1839. Two 
vols. 
II. Alatar: A Spanish Ballad. 

The Angel of Mercy : An Oriental Tale. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 115 

Epilogue to Barharossa. 

The Loss of Alhama: From the Spanish. 

Phatyr's Song of Triumph. 

The Princess and the Slave : A Tale. 

The Tailor's Wife. (From the German.) 

Zayde and Zayda: From the Spanish. 

III. TouchesmWilliam; or. The Sailor Boy, Lines . . on . . C. 
J. Fox, and other poems. 

John Leyden, 1775-1811. 
II. [The Arab Warrior.] 
[The Fight of Pray a.] 
[Finland Mother's Song.] 

IV. See Symons, p. 171, and Dictionary of National Biography. 

George Lillo, 1693-1739. 
I. The Fatal Curiosity. In Inchbald's British Theatre, vol. XI. 
II. [The Christian Hero.]— "Set in Albania. " 
III. The Fatal Curiosity.— Especially I, 3; II, 3. 

Robert Lloyd, 1733-1754. 

I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XV. 

III. The Cit's Country Box. — " Now bricklayers, carpenters and 
joiners," sq. 

The Cobbler of Cripplegate's Letter to Robert Lloyd. — 
"The Chinese ladies feet" sq. 

John Gibson Lockhart, 1794-1854. 
I. Ancient Spanish Ballads; Historical and Romantic. A 

New Edition, Revised. London, 1859. 
II. Dragut, the Corsair. 

The Flight from Granada. 
The Moor Calaynos. 
Moorish Ballads. 
The Vow of Red u an. 

IV. There is a Moorish element in several poems not named 
above. The Orientalism of the Spanish Ballads is mainly 
a matter of theme rather than diction. 



116 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

John Logan, 1748-1788. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
Ill A Tale.— Partly Oriental. 

Edward Lovibond, 1724-1775. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVI. 
II. On an Asiatic Lady. 
Reply to Miss G — . 

Song: "Hang my Lyre upon the Willow. " 
To Laura: Farewell to the Rose. 

To Laura, on Her Receiving a Mysterious Letter from a 
Methodist Divine. 
To the Same. 

To the Same: On Her Dress. 
To the Same: On Politics. 
III. The Tears of Old May-Day. — Last three stanzas. 

George Lyttelton, 1709-1773. ~ 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIV. 

III. The Progress of Love : Hope. Eclogue II. — "Ah ! how, my 
dear," sq. 

IV. Lyttelton, author of Letters from a Persian in England 
(1735), is Orientalized — very slightly — in Edward Moore's 
Trial of Selim. 

Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1800-1859. 
I. Works. London, 1898. Twelve vols. 
II. The Deliverance of Vienna. Translated from Filicaja. 

The Marriage of Tirzah and Ahirad. 
III. Lays of Ancient Rome. — The Prophecy of Capys, 13, 28, 31. 

Letitia Elizabeth Landon Maclean, 1802-1838. 
I. Poems in Miles, vol. V. 
II. The Moorish Maiden's Vigil. 

William Maginn, 1793-1842. 
I. Poems in Jerrold and Leonard. 
II. The Galiongee : A Fragment of a Turkish Tale. 

David Mallet, 1700-1765. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIV. 
III. The Excursion. Canto I. — "From Zembla's cliflFs," *g. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 117 

James Clarence Mangan, 1803-1849. 
I, Poems in Miles, vol. III. 
II. Ghazel: The World. By Kemal-Oomi. 

The Hundred-leafed Rose. By Mohammed ben Osman ben 

Ali Nakkash, called Lamii, or, The Dazzling. 

The Karamanian Exile. From the Ottoman. 

Passage. From Hudayi II, Native of AnatoHa. 

The Time of the Barmecides. From the Arabic. 

The Time of the Roses. From the Turkish of Mesihi. 

The Wail of the Three Khalendeers. From the Ottoman. 

William Mason, 1724-1797. 
I. Poems. London, 1830. Two vols. 

Elf rida, and Caractacus : Dramatic Poems. London, 1819. 
The English Garden: A Poem. With Commentary and 
Notes by W. Burgh. London, 1819. 
(The above four vols, bound in one.) 

III. The English Garden. 

Book II. — "The Tartar tyrants," sq. 

— "But now the conquering arms" sq. 
Touches elsewhere in the poem. 

IV. Mason's Orientalism is interesting by way of contrast to 
the strong Celtic and Greek aspects of his dramatic poems. 

William Julius Mickle, 1734-1788. 
I. Translation of Camoens' Lusiad. In Chalmers, vol. XXI. 

Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 
II. The Lusiad. 

Sonnet to Vasco da Gama: From Tasso. 
III. Almada Hill. — "But turn we now" sq. 

— "The naval pride of those bright days" sq. 
Liberty: An Elegy. — Stanzas 16-19. 

James Miller, 1703-1744. 
I. Mahomet, the Imposter. In Inchbald's British Theatre, 

vol. XIII. 
II. This is an Oriental tragedy, adapted from Voltaire. 

Henry Hart Milman, 1791-1868. 
I. Poems in Frost, 1843. 
II. [Mahabharata. (From the Sanskrit.)] 



118 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

III. Samor. Book XI. — "As in the Oriental wars" «g. 

Mary Russell Mitford, 1787-1855. 
II. [Christina, or The Maid of the South Seas.] 
[Sadak and Kalasrade.] 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 1689-1762. 

I. Letters and Works. Edited by Lord Wharncliffe. With 

Additions, etc. by W. Moy Thomas. New Edition, revised. 

London, 1887. Two vols. Bohn's Standard Library. 

II. "Now Philomel renews her tender strain." (Vol. I, p. 182.) 

Verses Written in the Chiosk of the British Palace at Pera. 

III. An Epistle to The Earl of Burlington. — *' Thus on the sands" 
sq. 

IV. The Verses are perhaps the first English poem of note 
written in the Orient. (1717.) 

James Montgomery, 1771-1854. 
I. Poetical Works. Boston, 1881. Five vols, in two. British 

Poets. 
II. Abdallah and Sabat. 

The Battle of Alexandria. 
Birds. 

The Bird of Paradi.se. 

The Canary. 

The Ostrich. 

The Pelican. 
The Bramin. 
The Cast-away Ship. 
The Sequel. 
China Evangelized. 
The Christians' Call to the Gipsies. 
A Cry from South Africa. 
The Daisy in India. 
A Deed of Darkness. 
For a Congregation of Negroes. 
The Loss of the Locks. 
The Pelican Island. 

Songs on the Abolition of Negro Slavery in the British 
Colonies. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme lig 

Sonnet ... on the Siege of Faniagusta. 
Thoughts on Wheels. — No. II. The Car of Juggernaut. 
To My Friend, George Bennet, Esq. 
The Voyage of the Blind. 
III. Greenland. 

Canto I. — "Unwearied as the camel, " sq. 

Canto IV. — From x\sia's fertile womb," sq. 
The Ocean. — "Thus the pestilent Upas," sq. And passim. 
Verses to the Memory of . . Richard Reynolds. III. — 
First four lines. 
A Voyage Round the World. 

The West Indies. — Treatment of Africa or the Negro 
throughout the poem. 

The World before the Flood. — Biblical; with some Oriental 
element. 

Edward Moore, 1712-1757. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIV. 

Poems, Fables and Plays. London, 1756. 
II. Solomon: A Serenata. 

The Trial of Selim, the Persian. (See above, under Lyttel- 
ton.) 

Thomas Moore, 1779-1852. 
I. Poetical Works. Boston, 1879. Six vols, in three. 
II. The East -Indian. 

Fables for the Holy Alliance. 

Fable III. 

Fable ^^ 
The Fudge Family in Paris. Letter IX. — September 6th. 
From the High Priest of Apollo to a Virgin of Delhi. 
Fum and Hum. 
Lalla Rookh. 
National Airs. 

Cashmerian. 

Hungarian. 

Indian. 

Mahratta. 

Russian. 
Ode to the Sublime Porte. 



120 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

On a Beautiful East-Indian. 
To My Mother. 

The Twopenny Post Bag. — Letter VI. 
A Vision of Philosophy. 
III. Epistle IX. — Opening lines, and passim. 
The Fudge Family in Paris. Letter X. 
News for Country Cousins. 
Rhymes on the Road. — Extract IV. 
The Twopenny Post Bag. — Letter II. 

William Motherwell, 1797-1835. 
I. Poetical Works. With Memoir by James M'Conechy 
New Edition, Enlarged. Boston, 1847. 
II. The Crusader's Farewell. 

Ouglou's Onslaught: A Turkish Battle Song. 
Zara. 

Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne, 1766-1845. 
I. Life Songs of the Baroness Nairne. Edited by Charles 
Rogers. Edinburgh, 1905. 

John Henry, Cardinal Newman, 1801-1890. 
I. Verses on Various Occasions. London and New York, 1889. 
III. Heathen Greece. — Touches. 
Solitude. — Touches. 

Thomas Love Peacock, 1785-1866. 
I. The Genius of the Thames, Palmyra, and Other Poems. 

Second Edition. London and Edinburgh, 1812. 
II. Palmyra. 
III. The Genius of the Thames. 

Part I. — "Where Tigris runs, " sq. 
Part II.— "Thus fair, of old," sq. 
And passim. 

Robert Pollok, 1799-1827. 
I. The Course of Time. Sixteenth Edition. Edinburgh and 
London, 1841. 
HI. Book V. — " Desire of every land ! " sq. 

Book VII. — "The Memphian mummy, " sq. 

— "Athens, and Rome, and Babylon," sq. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 121 

Book VIII. — Opening lines. 

— "He could not trust the word of heaven, " sq. 

WiNTHROP Mackwokth Praed, 1802-1839. 
I. Poems. With a Memoir by the Rev. Derwent Coleridge. 

Second Edition. London, 1864. Two vols. 
II. Australasia. 
Hindostan. 

In Obitum . . . T. F. Middleton, Episcopi Calcuttensis. 
Pyramides ^gyptiacse. 
The Pyramids of Egypt. 

III. Athens. — "Again long years of darkness" sq. 

The County Ball. — "I come to ye a stranger guest," sq. 
The Fancy Ball. — Passim. 
Lidian's Love.— XXIII-XXVII. 

IV. Touches in Surly Hall, Arrivals at a Watering-Place, etc. 

Thomas Pringle, 1789-1834. 
II. [African Sketches.] 

Bryan Waller Procter, 1790-1874. 
I. Poems in Frost, 1843. 
II. Gyges. 

Julian the Apostate. 

The Return of Mark Antony. 

III. Amelia Wentworth. 
Marcian Colonna. 

Part I.— 1. 

Part III.— 13 and 17. 

IV. Slight touches or brief passages in The Falcon, Ludovico 
Sforza, Tartarus, and Werner. 

Ann Radcliffe, 1864-1823. 
I. The Romance of the Forest, Interspersed with Some Pieces 
of Poetry. London, 1806. Three vols. 
The Mysteries of Udolpho: A Romance. With an Intro- 
duction by D. Murray Rose. London, 1903. 
II. The Mysteries of Udolpho. Chapter XVII. — Stanzas. 
III. The Romance of the Forest. 

Chapter XI. — Song of a Spirit. One line. 
Chapter XVIII. — Morning, On the Sea-shore, 



1S2 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

John Hamilton Reynolds, 1796-1852. 
II. [Safie: An Eastern Tale.] 

Samuel Rogers, 1763-1855. 
I. Poetical Works. John W. Lovell Company, New York, n. d. 
II. An Inscription. 

Ode to Superstition. — I, 3; II, 2. 
III. Italy. 

Part I, 2. — "And whence the talisman" sq. 
Part II, 22. — "And that yet greater scourge," sq. 
— Closing passage. 
Human Life. — "A tale is told" sq. 
The Pleasures of Memory. 

Part I. — "Down by j^on hazel copse," sq. 
Part II. — "From Guinea's coasts" sq. 
The Voyage of Columbus. — "Such to their grateful ear" sq. 

William Stewart Rose, 1795-1845. 
II. [Translation of Orlando Fnrioso.] 

John Scott, 1730-1783. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 
II. On the Ingenious Mr. Jones's Elegant Translations and 
Imitations of Eastern Poetry. 
Oriental Eclogues. 

Li-Po; or, the Good Governor: A Chinese Eclogue. 
Serira; or, The x\rtificial Famine: An East-Indian Eclo- 
gue. 

Zerad; or. The Absent Lover: An Arabian Eclogue. 
III. Elegy III.— "Ask Grecia," sq. 

Epistle II: Winter Amusements in the Country. — "Such, 
hapless Cook!" sq. 

An Essay on Painting. — "Now his pleased step" sq. 
Ode XXIII. 

Walter Scott, 1771-1832. 
I. Poetical Works. Boston, 1881. Ten vols, in five. British 
Poets. 
II. Ahriman. (From The Talisman, Chapter III.) 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 123 

"Canny moment, lucky fit" (From Guy Mannering, Chap- 
ter III.) 

The Crusader's Return, (From Ivanhoe, Chapter XVIII.) 
The Fire-King. 

The Search after Happiness; or, The Quest of the Sultaun 
Solimaun. 

" Twist ye, twine ye ! " (From Guy Mannering, Chapter IV.) 
Verses ... to the Grand-Duke Nicholas of Russia. 
"Wasted, weary, wherefore stay. " (From Guy Mannering^ 
Chapter XXVII.) 
III. The Bridal of Triermain. Canto III.— 20-24 and 30-31. 

Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1792-1822. 
I. Complete Poetical Works. Edited by G. E. Woodberry. 

Boston, 1894, Four vols. 
II. Alastor. 

Bigotry's Victim. 

Fragments of an Unfinished Drama. 

From the Arabic: An Imitation. 

Hellas. 

[Henry and Louisa. — Part II.] 

The Indian Serenade. 

Prometheus Unbound. 

The Revolt of Islam. 

Sonnet : Ozymandias. 

Sonnet: To the Nile. 

The Witch of Atlas. 

fZeinab and Kathema.] 

III. Ode to Liberty.— III. 
Queen Mab. 

II. — "Beside the eternal Nile" sq. 
VII. — "The name of God" sq. 
IX. — "Even Time, the conqueror," sq. 
And passim. 

IV, Many phrases and brief passages in other poems. 

William Shenstone, 1714-1763, 

I, Poetical Works. With Life, etc., by the Rev. George Gil- 
fillan. Edinburgh, London, and Dublin, 1854. 



12If University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

III. Elegy XIV.— Stanzas 9-14. 
Elegy XX. 

Christopher Smart, 1722-1770. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVI. 
III. On the Goodness of the Supreme Being. — "Attest, and 
praise," sq. 

On the Immensity of the Supreme Being. — "Easy may 
fancy pass, " sq. 

Horace Smith, 1779-1849. 
I. (With James Smith.) Rejected Addresses; or. The New 
Theatrum Poetarum. New Edition. London, 1879. 
Poems in Miles, vol. IX. 

III. Address to a Mummy in Belzoni's Exhibition. 
The Jester Condemned to Death. 

IV. The Rebuilding. (With James Smith.) 

Tobias George Smollett, 1721-1771. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XV. 

III. Ode to Independence. — "Arabia's scorching sands" sq. 

IV. Brief passages in other poems. 

Robert Southey, 1774-1843. 
I. Poetical Works. Boston, 1880. Ten vols, in five. British 

Poets. 
II. The Battle of Pultowa. 
Botany Bay Eclogues. 
The Curse of Kehama. 
Donica. 

Gonzalo Hermiguez. 
Imitated from the Persian. 
The King of the Crocodiles. 
La Caba. 

The Lover's Rock. 
The March to Moscow. 
Ode on the Battle of Algiers. 
Ode on the Portrait of Bishop Heber. 

Ode to His Imperial Majesty, Alexander I, Emperor of All 
the Russias. 
Poems Concerning the Slave-Trade. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 126 

Queen Orraca, and the Five Martyrs of Morocco. 
Sonnet XIV. 
Thalaba the Destroyer. 
The Young Dragon. 
III. Joan of Arc. 

Book VI. — "These as they saw, " sq. 

— "[Come thundering on.] As when Chederles 

comes" sq. 
— "Grateful, as to the way-worn traveller, "aj. 
Book VII.— Touches. 
Book VIII.— "So thickly thronged" sq. 
Book X. — "Fills not the Persian's soul," sq. 
— "The foe tremble and die. " sq. 
— "As the blood-nurtured monarch" sq. 
— "The Maiden rushing onward," sq. 
The Retrospect. — "Oh, while well-pleased" sq. 
A Tale of Paraguay. — Particularly Canto I, 13. 

William Thompson, 1712-1766. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XV. 
II. The Magi: A Sacred Eclogue. — Biblical, but Oriental in 

tone. 
III. An Hynm to May. — Stanza 13. 

James Thomson, 1700-1748. 
I. Poetical Works. Edited by D. C. Tovey. London, 1897. 

Two vols. 
II. Prologue to Mallet's Mustapha. 
III. Liberty. Part III. — "From the dire deserts" s^. 

The Seasons. — Extensive passages in Autumn, Summer, 
and Winter. 

John Tobin, 1770-1804. 
I. The Honeymoon. In Inchbald's British Theatre, vol. XXV. 
III. A brief passage in I, 1. 

Horace Walpole, 1717-1797. 
I. Works. London, 1798. Four vols. 
II. Epilogue to Tamerlane. 
III. The Mysterious Mother.— II, 1. 



186 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

TV. A Few Oriental touches in various poems; such as "crossing 
a gypsy's palm, " "some luxurious Satrap's barbarous lust, " 
etc. 

Joseph Warton, 1722-1800. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
III. Fashion : A Satire. — Passim. 
Ode to Liberty. — Passim. 

Thomas Warton, 1728-1790. 

I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVIII. 
II. Ode XII: The Crusade. 
III. The Pleasures of Melancholy. — " What though beneath" sq 

— "To me far happier" sq. 
— "Yet feels the hoary her- 
mit" sq. 
Translations and Paraphrases. — Job. 

Charles Jeremiah Wells, 1800-1879. 
I. Joseph and His Brethren. With an Introduction by A. C. 
Swinburne. Oxford University Press, n. d. The World's 
Classics. 

III. While this is a Biblical play, it has passages of distinctly 
Oriental quality. Note especially I, 3; Prologue to II; II, 3; 
and III, 3. 

Gilbert West, 1703-1756. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XIII. 

IV. Brief passages passim. Some touches in the translations 
from Pindar. 

Henry Kirke White, 1785-1806. 
I. Complete Works. With an Account of his Life by Robert 

Southey. E. Kearny, New York, n. d. 
11. Sonnet IX. 
III. The Christiad. — Passim. 
Gondoline: A Ballad. 
Time. — VII; and brief passages passim. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 127 

Paul Whitehead, 1710-1774. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVI. 
III. An Occasional Song. — Stanza 4. 

The State Dunces: k Satire. — "But Asia's deserts" sq. 

William Whitehead, 1715-1785. 
I. Poems in Chalmers, vol. XVII. 

The Roman Father. In Inchbald's British Theatre, vol. 
XIV. 
II. Prologue to The Orphan of China. 
III. A Charge to the Poets. — "Friend of the finer arts " sq. 
An Hymn to the Nymph of Bristol Spring. 
"Yet some there have been, " sq. 
" ' Twas then, Avonia, " sq. 
On Nobility : An Epistle. — " In Turkey still " sq. 

William Wilkie, 1721-1772. 
I. Poems in dialmers, vol. XVL 

III. Fables: The Breeze and the Tempest. — "From Zembla to 
the burning zone" sq. 

Charles Wilkins, 1794 (?)-1836. 

IV. See Dictionary of National Biography. 

John Wilson, 1785-1854. 
I, Works. Edited by J. F. Ferrier. Edinburgh and London, 

1855-58. Twelve vols. Verse in vol. XII. 
II. Lines written on seeing a Picture by Berghem. 

Lines Written on Reading Mr. Clarkson's History of the 
Abolition of the Slave Trade. 

III. The Isle of Palms. — The tropical coloring of this poem 
shows some kinship with Oriental style. 

IV. Touches and a few brief passages in other poems. 

John Wolcott, 1738-1819. 
I. The Poetical Works of Peter Pindar, Esq. Dublin, 1788. 

III. TheLousiad. Canto II. — " O Conscience ! who to Clive "^q'. 

IV. Slight passages in other poems. 

William Wordsworth, 1770-1850. 
I. Poetical Works. Edited by William Knight. Edinburgh, 
1862. Eleven vols. 



1^8 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

II. "Ere with cold beads of midnight dew. " 
The Armenian Lady's Love. 
Beggars. 
Sequel. 

Ecclesiastical Sketches. 
Crusades. 
Crusaders. 

Missions and Travels. 
The Egyptian Maid; or. The Romance of the Water Lily. 
The French Army in Russia. 
On the Same Occasion. 
Gipsies. 

"Go back to antique ages, if thine eyes. " 
The Prioress's Tale. From Chaucer. 
The Russian Fugitive. 
The Source of the Danube. 
Suggested by a Picture of the Bird of Paradise. 
III. Descriptive Sketches. — "The Grison gipsy" sq. 
The Excursion. 

Book III. — "Not less than that huge pile" sq. 

— "But stop! — These theoretic fancies jar" sq. 
Book IV. — "Within whose silent chambers" sq. 

— "Whether the Persian" sq. 
Book VII. — "Eastward, the Danube" sq. 
A few other slight passages passim. 
The Prelude. 

Book V. — "A precious treasure '\tq. 

— "Sleep seized me" sq. 
Book VI. — "Strong in herself and in beatitude" sq. 
Book VII. — "There was a time" sq. 

— "The Swede, the Russian;" sq. 
— "Enjoyment haply handed down" sq. 
Book VIII. — "With deep devotion, Nature," sq. 
Book X. — "They — who had come elate" sq. 

Edward Young, 1681-1765. 
I. Poetical Works. With a Memoir by the Rev. John Mitford. 
Boston, 1896. Two vols, in one. Aldine Edition. 
III. The Consolation. 

"Much less in art," sq. Vaguely Oriental. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 129 

"Range through the fairest," sq. 
liOve of Fame, The Universal Passion. Satire II. — "On 
buying books" sq. 
Imperium Pelagi. 

Strain I. — "His sons, Po, Ganges," sq. 

Strain II. — Pa ssim . 

Strain V. — "Whence Tartar Grand," sq. 
Ocean: An Ode. — "From Indian mines," sq. 
A Paraphrase on the Book of Job. — Passim. 
IV. The first citation given above is a good example of a pas- 
sage which seems Oriental in significance, but has no 
direct reference to the Orient. 

B. Collections of Poems 

Aiken, John: Select Works of the British Poets from Ben Jonson 
to Beattie. With Biographical and Critical Notices. Ninth 
Edition. Thomas Wardle, Philadelphia, 1838. 

Chalmers, Alexander: The Works of the English Poets from 
Chaucer to Cowper. London, 1810. Twenty-one vols. 

Frost, John : Select Works of the British Poets from Falconer to 
Sir Walter Scott. With Biographical Sketches. Thomas War- 
die, Philadelphia, 1838. 

[Frost, John:] Select Works of the British Poets from Southey to 
Croly. With Biographical and Critical Notices. J. Whetson 
and Son, Philadelphia, 1843. 

Hamilton, Walter, Editor : Parodies of the Works of English and 
American Authors. London, 1884-9. Six vols. 

Inchbald, Mrs. Elizabeth Simpson: The British Theatre. Lon- 
don, 1808. Twenty-five vols. 

Inchbald, Mrs. Elizabeth Simpson: The Modern Theatre. London, 
1811. Ten vols. 

Jerrold, Walter, and R. M. Leonard, Editors: A Century of 
Parody and Imitation. The Oxford University Press, 1913. 

Miles, Alfred H., Editor: The Poets and Poetry of the Century. 
London, n. d. Ten vols. 

Morley, John, Editor: Parodies and Other Burlesque Pieces by 
George Canning, George Ellis, and John Hookham Frere. I on- 
don, Glasgow, Manchester, and New York, 1890. 



130 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

C. General Bibliogkaphical Notes 
1. Linguistic Works 

Baker, Arthur E. : A Concordance to the Poetical and Dramatic 
Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. New York, 1914. 

Bartlett, John: A New and Complete Concordance or Verbal 
Index to Words, Phrases and Passages in the Dramatic Works 
of Shakespeare. London and New York, 1894. 

Bradshaw, John : A Concordance to the Poetical Works of Milton. 
London, 1884. 

Carey, William: Dictionary of Mahratta. 1810. 

Carey, William: Dictionary of Bengali. 1818. Three vols. 

Carey, William: Dictionary of Bhotanta. 1826. 

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia, The. Revised and Enlarged 
Edition. New York. (1911.) Twelve vols. 

Cooper, Lane : Concordance to the Poems of William Wordsworth. 
liOndon, 1911. 

Cowden-Clarke, Mrs.: The Complete Concordance to Shakes- 
peare. New and Revised Edition. London, 1889. 

Cunliffe, Richard John: A New Shakespearean Dictionary. Lon- 
don, Glasgow, and Bombay, 1910. 

Ellis, F. S. : A Lexical Concordance to the Poetical Works of 
Percy Bysshe Shelley. London, 1892. 

Emerson, Oliver Farrar: The History of the English Language. 
New York and London, 1907. 

Johnson, Samuel : A Dictionary of the English Language. Robert 
Gordon Lathan, Editor. London, 1870. Two vols. 

Leeb-Lundberg, W.: Word-formation in Kiphng. A Stylistic- 
philological Study, Lund and Cambridge, 1909. 

Lockwood, Laura E. : Lexicon to the English Poetical Works of 
John Milton. New York and London, 1907. 

Loewe, Louis: Origin of the Egyptian Language. 1837. 

Marshman, John Clark: Dictionary of the Bengalee Language. 
1827-8. Two vols. 

Marshman, Joshua : The Works of Confucius. Original Text with 
Translation, and Dissertation on the Language of China. 
Serampur, 1809. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 131 

Molineux, Marie Ada: A Phrase Book from the Poetic and 
Dramatic Works of Robert Browning. Boston and New York, 
1896. 

Murray, James A. H., Editor: A New EngHsh Dictionary on 
Historical Principles. The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1888-1916. 
Ten vols. 

Oxford Cyclopedic Concordance to the English Bible. Oxford 
University Press. (1901.) 

Richardson, John: Dictionary of Persian, Arabic and English 
London, 1777. 

Schmidt, Alexander: Shakespeare-Lexicon. Third Edition, Re- 
vised and Enlarged by Gregor Sarrazin. New York and Berlin, 
1902. Two vols. 

Skeat, Walter W.: An Etymological Dictionary of the English 
Language. New Edition; Re vi.sed and Enlarged. The Claren- 
don Press, Oxford, 1910. 

2. Biographical, Critical, and Historical Works 

AUibone, S. Austin: x\ Critical Dictionary of English Literature 
and British and American Authors. Philadelphia, 1891-6. Six 
vols. 

Beers, Henry A. : A History of English Romanticism in the Eight- 
eenth Century. New York, 1889. 

Beers, Henry A. : A History of English Romanticism in the Nine- 
teenth Century. New York, 1901. 

Bible, The : King James Version. 

Brewster, Dorothy: Aaron Hill, Poet, Dramatist, Projector. 
Columbia University Press, New York, 1913. 

Conant, Martha Pike: The Oriental Tale in England in the 
Eighteenth Century. The Columbia University Press, New 
York, 1910. 

Courthope, William John : History of English Poetry. New York 
and London, 1895-1910. Six vols. 

Dawson, Edgar: Byron und Moore. Inaugural-Dissertation. 
Leipzig. 1902. 



132 University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 

Foster, John : Critical Essays Contributed to the Eclectic Review. 
Edited by J. E. Ryland. London, 1888. Two vols. The Bohn 
Standard Library. 

Christianity in India. 
Daniell's Oriental Scenery. 
Hindoo Idolatry and Christianity. 
Sanscrit Literature. 
Southey's Curse of Kehama. 
Vindication of the Baptist Missionaries. 
Fuhrman, Ludwig: Die Belesenlieit des jungen Byron. Inaugural- 
Dissertation. Friedenau bei Berlin, 1903. 
Gosse, Edmund: A History of Eighteenth Century Literature. 

London and New York, 1889. 
Hosmer, James K.: A Short History of German Literature. Re- 
vised Edition. New York, 1896. 
Jeffrey, Francis: Contributions to the Edinburgh Review. New 
York, 1871. Four vols, in one. Modern British Essayists. 
Review of Lalla Rookh; an Oriental Romance. 
Review of Roderick; the Last of the Goths. 
Jones, William: Dissertation sur la litterature Orientale. 1771. 
Jones, William : On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations. In Chal- 
mers, vol. XVIII, pp. 502-508. 
Jones, William: Traite sur la litterature Orientale. 1770. 
Langhorne, John: Observations on the Oriental Eclogues (of 
Collins). In Dyce's edition of Collins cited above, pp. 125-139. 

Macdonell, Arthur A.: A History of Sanskrit Literature. New 
York, 1900. 

Mackintosh, James: Miscellaneous Works. New York, 1873. 
Three vols, in one. Modern British Essayists. 

Marks, Jeannette: English Pastoral Drama (1660-1798). Lon- 
don, 1908. 

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley: Letters and W^orks. Edited by 
her Great Grandson, Lord Wharncliffe. With Additions, etc., 
by W. Moy Thomas. New Edition Revised. London, 1887. 
Two vols. The Bohn Standard Library. 

More, Paul Elmer: The Drift of Romanticism. Boston and New 
York, 1913. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 133 

Phelps, William Lyon: The Beginnings of the English Romantic 
Movement. Boston, New York, Chicago, and London. (1893). 

Reynolds, Myra: The Treatment of Nature in English Poetry 
between Pope and Wordsworth. The University of Chicago 
Press, Chicago, 1909. 

Stephen, Leslie and Sidney Lee, Editors : Dictionary of National 
Biography. New York and London, 1885-1912. Sixty-six vols. 

Symons, Arthur: The Romantic Movement in English Poetry. 
London, 1909. 

Thiergen, Oscar: Byron's und Moore's Orientahsche Gedichte. 
Eine Parallele, Inaugural-Dissertation. Leipzig, 1880. 

Tucker, T. G. : The Foreign Debt of English Literature. London, 
1907. 

Underhill, John Garrett: Spanish Literature in the England of 
the Tudors. New York and London, 1899. Columbia Univer- 
sity Studies in Literature. 



13Jf 



University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 



II. Notes on Oriental Vocabulary 

A. Oriental Vocabulary in Sir William Jones 

The diction of Jones includes many words characteristic of the 
Oriental verse of our period in general, and a considerable number 
which are much more rare, in some cases probably unique. To the 
former class belong such words as antelopes, Arabian, Asiatic, asp, 
caravan, cypress, Egyptian, elephants, genii, jasmine, lotus, musk, 
myrtle, Nilus, rose, sandals, the names of several precious stones, 
etc. In the table below are given the most important words of the 
second class found in the text of (lialmers. Many of these words 
are explained in footnotes by the author. It Avill be noted that 
nearly all are nouns, and that a large proportion are proper names 
of deities, persons, or places. Most are simply transliterations; 
and few have an assured place in English dictionaries. 



Abelah 


Cumar 


Laili 


Ravi 


Adda 


Cumara 


Langa 


Reti 


Aden 


Gurus 


Laschmi 


Rocnabad 


Aditi 




Lecshmy 


Rucmiui 


Agnyastra 


Daysa 


Lelit 




Agra 


Daysasha 




Sachi 


Ahmed 


Day scar 


Mactigir 


Sagar 


Ajeirs 


Deipec 


Madhava 


Samarcand 


Amana 


Deits 


Magadh 


Sambal 


Amer 


Devatas 


Mahadeo 


Sanscrit 


Amra 


Devtas 


Mahadew 


Sarat 


Amrit 


Dhenasry 


Mahanadi 


Sasin 


Ananga 


Dhriterashtra 


Mahesa 


Scythian 


Area 


Draupaty 


Maia 


Seita 


Arun 


Durga 


Malcaus 


Seita Cund 


Aryama 


Duryodhen 


Malsry 


Sereswati 


Asavery 


Dwapar Yug 


Maricha 


Sereswaty 


Asi 


Dwarpayan 


Martunda 


Seyte Yug 


Asmora 


Dwaraca 


Marva 


Shambhawty 


Asurs 


Dyripetir 


Mathuna 


Sindhu 


Aswatthama 




Mathura 


Singarhar 


Aswin 


Elachy 


Matra 


Siret 


Azib 


Erjun 


Maya 


Sisira 


Azza 




Maygh 


Sita 




Gandac 


Medhu 


Siva 


Bactrian 


Gandharvas 


Medhumadha 


Sivy 


Bala 


Ganesa 


Melar 


Solima 


Benares 


Ganga 


Mena 


Soma 


Bhagirath 


Geda 


Mengala 


Subahdar 



OfihoDte: Oriental Didion and Theme 



135 



Bhairan 


Gocul 


Menru 


Sudaman 


Bhairavy 


Gogra 


Merich 


Suderman 


Bhanu 


Gopa 


Meru 


Sumeru 


Bhavani 


Gopia 


Mihira 


Supiary 


Bhismarsu 


Gour 


Mosellay 


Sura 


Bhopaly 


Goverdhen 




Surauimnaga 


Bocara 


Grishma 


Nagkeser 


Surya 


Brahma 


Gujry 


Nairrit 


Swerga 


Brahman 


Gumpi 


Narac 




Brahmaputra 


Guncary 


Narayan 


Taraca 


Brindavan 


Gwury 


Narayena 


Teic 




Gyres 


Nared 


Tenca 


Cailas 




Nargal 


Toda 


Cailasa 


Hadramut 


Nawadwip 


Trisrota 


Caley 


Haldea 


Netta 


Tulsy 


Caly Yug 


Hara 


Nipal 




Call 


Hementa 




Vacadevy 


Calinadi 


Heri 


Ornius 


Vahni 


Cama 


Heridaswa 


Oshadhi 


Valmic 


Cambala 


Himalaya 




Vamuna 


Camod 


Himansu 


Palamau 


Vani 


Candarpa 


Himola 


Palanqueen 


^'aran 


Cantesa 


Hindol 


Pana 


Varuna 


Canyacuvja 


Hindustan 


Pandu 


Vasanta 


Carmasckhi 




Parvati 


Vasava 


Carnaty 


Indra 


Patala 


Vedas 


Cashgahr 


Indrani 


Patali 


Venamaly 


Casi 


Indraprest 


Pedma 


Versha 


Casyapa 


Indraprestha 


Pedmala 


Vinatian 


Catels 


Isa 


Pedmanabha 


Virawer 


Catha 


Is'wara 


Peitamber 


Vishnupedi 


Caydara 




Pendit 


"\'erihaspati 


Cetaca 


Jafer 


Petmenjary 


Vishnu 


Champa 


Jami 


Piepel 


Vraga 


Chatacs 


Jeifel 


Pulomaja 


Vrindavan 


Chawla 


Joutery 


Purander 


Vyas 


Cheer a 






Vyasa 


Chitraratha 


Kais 


Ragnys 




Chury 


Kernel 


Rahu 


Yama 


Coaba 


Ki 


Rajas 


Yamuna 


Condals 


Kiticum 


Rajahs 


Yudishteir 


Cosa 


Krishen 


Rama 


Yudhishteir 


Cosecs 


Kytabh 


Rancary 


Yunan 


Crishna 




Rangamar 




Cubera 


Lacshmi 
Ladon 


Ranies 


Zeineb 



136 



University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 



B.- English Words of Oriental Derivation 

The following list is by no means complete. It is taken from 
the " Distribution of Words " in Skeat, Edition of 1910, pp. 761- 
780; this list then being revised by the New International Diction- 
ary of 1910. 

The following abbreviations are used: A. — Arabic; C. — Chi- 
nese; E. — Egyptian; H. — Hindustani; M. — Malay; O. — "Ori- 
ental"; P. — Persian; S. — Sanskrit; T. — Turkish. 



Admiral. A. 
Alcayde. A. 
Alcohol. A. 
Alcoran. A. 
Alcove. A. 
Algebra. A. 
Alguazil. A. 
Alkali. A. 
Amadavat. 

India. 
Amber. A. 
Aniline. S. 
Anna. Hindi. 
Areca. Canarese. 

Argosy. 
Dalmatian. 

Arrack. A. 

Arsenal. A. 

Artichoke. A. (?) 

Asafetida. P-Lat. 

Asparagus. P. (?) 

Assagai. 
Berber. 

Assassin. A. 

Atabal. A. 

Attar. P.-A. (?) 

Avatar. S. 

Azimuth. A. 

Azure. P. 

Balas. A. 
Bamboo. M. 
Bangle. H. 
Banian. S. 
Banyan. S. 
Baobob. 

West African. 



Cotton. A. 
Cowry. H. 
Creese. M. 
Crimson. S. 
Cubeb. A. 
Curry. Tamil. 

Dervish. P. 
Dey. T. 
Divan. P. 
Dragoman. A. 
Drosky. R. 
Dugong. M. 
Durbar. P. 

EUxir. A. 
Emir. A. 

Fakir. A. 
Fellah. A. 
Fez. From the 

town Fez. 
Firman. P. 
Fustian. E. 

Galangal. A. 

Gamboge. 

From Cambo- 
dia (Siam). 

Garble. A. 

Gazelle. A. 

Genet. A. 

Ghoul. A. 

Giaour. T. 

Ginger. O. 

Giraffe. A. 

Gnu. Kaffir. 



Lory. M. 

Lute. A. (?) 

Mace. S. (?) 
Magazine. A. 
Magi. P. 
Mameluke. A. 
Mammoth. 

Russian. 
Mandarin. H. 
Mango. Tamil. 
Mangrove. 

M.-English. 
Mattress. A. 
Minaret. A. 
Mogul. P. 
Mohair. A. 
Mohammedan. A. 
Mohur. P. 
Monsoon. A. 
Moonshee. A. 
Morse. R. 
Moslem. A. 
Mosque. A. 
Muezzin. A. 
Mufti. A. 
Musk. P. 
Mussulman. A. 

Nabob. A. 
Nadir. A. 
Nankeen. C. 
Nilgai. P. 

Orange. P.-A. 
Orang-outang. M 
Ottoman. A. 



Sarcenet. A. (?) 
Sash. A. 
Satrap. P. 
Scarlet. 

A.-P.-Lat. 
Scimitar. P. (?) 
Seguin. A. 
Senna. A. 
Sepoy. P. 
Shagreen. T. 
Shah. P. 
Shampoo. H. 
Shawl. 

P. or H. 
Sheik. A. 
Sherbet. A. 
Shrub. A. 
, Silk. O. (?) 
Simoom. A. 
Sirocco. A. 
Slave. 

Slavonic, 
Sofa. A. 
Soy. C. 

Spinach. A.-P. 
Steppe. R. 
Sugar. S. 
Sultan. A. 
Sumac. A. 

Tabby. A. 
Taboo. 

Polynesian. 
Taffeta. P. 
Talc. A. 
Talk. 

Lithuanian. 



Osborne: Oriental Diction and Theme 



137 



Basil. A. 
Bazaar. P. 
Bedouin. A. 
Beg. T. 
Begum. T. 
Benzoin. A. 
Beryl. S. (?) 
Betel. 

Tamil. 
Bezoar. P. 
Bhang. P. 
Bohea. C. 
Borax. P. 
Brahman. S. 
Brilliant. S. (?) 
Bungalow. 

Bengali. 

Caddy. M. 
Cadi. A. 
Caftan. T. 
Calash. Slavonic. 
CaU. A. 
Calico. 

East Indian. 
Camphor. S. 
Candy. S. 
Caravan. P. 
Caravansary. P. 
Carob. A. 
Cashmere. 

Cashmere. 
Cassowary. M. 
Catamaran. 

Tamil. 
Champac. S. 
Check. P. 
Cheetah. H. 
Chimpanzee. 

African. 
Chintz. H. 
Chouse. T. 
Cinnabar. P. 
Cipher. A. 
Civet. A. 
Cockatoo. M. 
Coflfee. T.-A. 
Cossack. Russian. 



Gong. M. 
Gorilla. 

W. African. 
Gum. Probably E 
Gutta-percha. M. 

Harem. A. 

Hazard. A. 

Hegira. A. 

Henna. A. 

Hooka. A. or P. 

Horde. T. 

Howdah. A. 

Howitzer. 
Bohemian. 

Houri. A. 

Hussar. Hunga- 
rian-Latin. 

Ibis. E. 

Jackal. P. 
Jagonelle. P. 
Janizary. T. 
Jar. A. 
Jasmine. P. 
Jerboa. A. 
Julep. P. 
Jungle. S. 
Jute. S. 

Kangaroo. 

Australian. 
Kermes. A. andP. 
Khan. 

P. and Tatar. 
Khedive. P. 
Kiosk. T. 
Koran. A. 

Lac. 

East Indian. 
Lama. Tibetan. 
Lascar. P. 
Lemon. P. 
Lilac. P. 
Lime. A. 
Loot. A. (?) 



Pagoda. P. (?) 
Palanquin. S. 
Paradise. 
. Avestan. 
Paramatta. 

Australian. 
Pariah. Tamil. 
Parsi. H.-P. 
Parvis. 

Avestan. 
Pasha. T. 
Pawnee. H. 
Peacock. O. (?) 
Peri. P. 
Pice. H. 
Pistachio. P. 
Polka. Bohemian. 
Proa. M. 
Pundit. S. 
Punch. S. 
Punkah. H. 

Quagga. Zulu. 

Racket. A. 
Rajah. S. 
Rajut. S. 
Rattan. M. 
Realgar. A. 
Ream. A. 
Rebec. A. (?) 
Reindeer. 

Lapp. 
Rice. S. (?) 
Rook. P.-A. 
Rouble. R. 
Rupee. S. 
Ryot. A.-H. 

Sable. Slavonic. 
Saccharine. S. 
Saffron. A.-P. 
Sago. M. 
Salaam. A. 
Sandal-wood S. 
Sanskrit. S. 
Saraband. P. 
Saracen. A. (?) 



Tamarind. A.-P. 
Taraxacum. 

A. (?)-P. (?) 
Tare. A. 
Tariff. A. 
Tartar. A. (?) 
Tattoo. 

Tahitan. 
Tea. 

Chinese. 
Teak. M. 
Thug. H. 
Tiara. P. 
Tiger. P. (?) 
Toddy. H. 
Tokay. 

Hungarian. 
Tom-tom. H. 
Tulip. T. 
Turban. T. 
Turk. 

P.-Tatar (?) 

Uhlan. Tatar. 
Ukase. R. 



Vampire. 

Servian. 
Van. P. 
Veda. S. 
Veranda. P. 
Verst. R. 
Vizier. A. 



(?) 



Wombat. 
Australian. 

Yak. Tibetan. 
Yataghan. T. 

Zamindar. P. 
Zanana. P. 
Zebra. 

Abyssinian. 
Zedoary. A.-P. 
Zenith. A. 
Zero. A. 
Zouave. Algerian. 



138 



University of Kansas Humanistic Studies 



C. Oriental Vocabulary in the King James Version 
of the Bible 

The King James version of the Bible includes the following 
words which may be considered as belonging to the Oriental 
vocabulary of our period, though the Bible is not necessarily to be 
viewed as a source. 



Adder 


Cyprus 


Jasper 


Pharaoh 


Agate 


Cyrene 




Phenicia 


Almond 




Lebanon 


Phrygia 


Aloes 


Dalmatia 


Leopard 


Pomegranate 


Amber 


Damascus 


I ibya 




Amethyst 


Desert 


Lizard 


Red -Sea 


Ape 


Diamond 


Locust 


Rose 


Asia 


Dromedary 


Lute 


Ruby 


Asp 


Dulcimer 






Assyria 




Mandrake 


Sabeans 


Assyrian 


Eden 


Medes 


Saffron 


Astaroth 


Egypt 


Media 


Sand 




Egyptian 


Melons 


Sapphire 


Baal 


Emerald 


Myrrh 


Sardonyx 


Babylon 


Ethiopia 




Saron 


Balm 


Ethiopian 


Nard 


Sharon 


Belshazzar 


Eunuch 


Nimrod 


Sidon 


Beryl 


Euphrates 


Nineveh 


Sidonians 
Spicery 


Camel 


Fig-tree 


Olive 


Spikenard 


Cane 


Frankincense 


Onyx 


Sycamore 


Carbuncle 




Ophir 


Syria 


Cassia 


Gold 




Syrians 


Cedar 


Grove 


Palm-tree 




Chaldea 




Parthians 


Tent 


Chaldeans 


Idol 


Peacock 


Timbrel 


Chaldees 


Idumea 


Pearls 


Topaz 


Chrysolite 


India 


Pelican 




Cinnamon 




Persia 


Viper 


Cymbals 


Jacinth 


Persian 


Vulture 


Cypress 


Jah 







INDEX 



Akenside, Mark, 36, 44, 94 
Arabian Nights, 48, 60, 78 
Ariosto, Lodivico, 34, 49, 78, 122 
Armstrong, John, 14, 44, 94 
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 16, 54 
Arnold, Matthew, 13, 16, 17, 42, 77 
Atherstone, Edwin, 94 

Baillie, Joanna, 19, 44, 46, 52, 54, 

73, 74, 78, 81, 94 
Barbauld, Anna Letitia, 95 
Barham, Richard Harris, 95 
Barker, Granville, 19 
Barnes, William, 95 
Beattie, James, 95 
Beckford, William, 52 
Beddoes, Thomas Lovell, 38, 42, 

51, 52, 73, 95 
Beers, Henry A., 11, 12, 13 
Beowulf, 9 
Bible, The (King James Version), 

8, 25, 32, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 

90, 138 
Blacklock, Thomas, 96 
Blair, Robert, 36, 44, 96 
Blake, William, 32, 42, 45, 51, 67, 

96 
Blind, Mathilde, 19 
Bloomfield, Robert, 97 
Bowles, William Lisle, 21, 25, 36, 

38, 44, 57, 65, 67, 82, 97 
Bowring, Sir John, 53, 71, 98 
Boyse, Samuel, 34, 69, 75, 79, 98 
Bradshaw, John, 11 
Brooke, Henry, 49, 52, 98 
Brown, John, 52, 98 
Browne, Isaac Hawkins, 22, 98 
Browning, Robert, 13, 17, 23 
Bryant, William Cullen, 72 
Burns, Robert, 15, 21, 32, 54, 98 
Butler, Samuel, 13 
Byrom, John, 23, 33, 99 
Byron, Lord, 8, 13, 15, 18, 19, 23, 

25, 26, 29, 36, 38, 39, 40, 50, 52, 

54. 79, 83, 91, 99 



Cambridge, Richard Owen, 74, 81, 

83, 100 
Camoens, Luis de, 25, 36, 66 
Campbell, Thomas, 15, 35, 42, 44, 

47, 72, 91, 100 
Canby, Henry Seidel, 12 
Canning, George, 100 
Carey, William, 65, 101 
Carlyle, Thomas, 8 
Cary, Henry Francis, 101 
Cawthorn, James, 34, 44, 56, 101 
Chatterton, Thomas, 32, 42, 54, 101 
Chaucer, Geoffrey, 9, 10, 20, 35, 40 
Churchill, Charles, 60, 102 
Coleridge, Hartley, 42, 102 
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 12, 18, 

26, 44, 49, 55, 79, 83, 86, 91 
Collins, William, 7, 13, 15, 21, 26, 

29, 31, 39, 41, 48, 51, 53, 54, 59, 

72, 102 
Colman, George, the Younger, 52, 

103 
Conant, Martha Pike, 8, 17, 52, 93 
Confucius, 27, 75, 81 
Congreve, William, 11, 12 
Cooper, John Gilbert, 61, 103 
Cotton, Nathaniel, 77, 103 
Cowley, Abraham, 71 
Cowper, William, 23, 38, 57, 103 
Crabbe, George, 13, 19, 38, 47, 49, 

58, 60, 63, 71, 75, 85, 104 
Croly, George, 105 
Croxall, Samuel, 12 
Cumberland, Richard, 105 
Cunningham, John, 32, 63 

Darley, George, 105 
Darwin, Erasmus, 71, 72, 83, 103 
Davenant, Sir William, 11, 18 
De Quincey, Thomas, 89 
Dobell, Sydney, 19 
Dodsley, Robert, 53, 106 
Doyle, Sir Francis Hastings, 106 
Dyer, John, 26, 44, 106 



no 



INDEX 



Ellis, George, 106 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 17, 20, 26 

Falconer, William, 69, 106 
Fawkes, Francis, 107 
Fergusson, Robert, 35, 107 
Fitzgerald, Edward, 18, 20, 49, 54 
Foster, John, 14, 41, 85 
Frere, John Hookham, 64, 107 

Gifford, William, 85 

Glover, Richard, 107 

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 67 

Goldsmith, Oliver, 52, 57, 58, 84, 

108 
Gosse, Edmund, 12, 19 
Grahame, James, 84, 108 
Grainger, James, 21, 61, 64, 108 
Gray, Thomas, 21, 108 

Hafiz, 27, 39, 54, 59, 78 

Hallam, Arthur H., 78, 108 

Hamilton, William, 109 

Harte, Walter, 32, 34, 49, 75, 109 

Hartson, Hall, 109 

Hawker, Robert Stephen, 38, 109 

Hazlitt, William, 86 

Heber, Reginald, 64, 91, 109 

Hemans, Felicia Dorothea, 15, 21, 

29, 54, 55, 62, 64, 65, 71, 72, 78, 

83, 109 
Heywood, John, 10 
Hill, Aaron, 11, 52. 110 
Hogg, James, 46, 111 
Home, John, 111 
Hood, Thomas, 51, 56, 63, 72, 74, 

111 
Hoole, John, 18, 34, 35, 49, 78, 111 
Home, Richard Henry, 121 
Hughes, John, 11. 52 
Hunt, Leigh, 83, 112 

Jago, Richard, 35, 52, 121 
Jami, 50 

Jeffrey, Francis, 40, 80, 83 
Jenyns, Soame, 32, 112 
Jephson, Robert, 112 
Johnson, Samuel, 13, 22, 52, 75 



Jones, Sir William, 12, 13, 15, 18, 
22, 23, 25, 26, 30, 39, 48, 49, 50, 

53, 54, 59, 62, 66, 73, 78, 90, 113 
Jonson, Benjamin, 77 

Keats, John, 12, 15, 32, 51, 72, 78, 

86, 89, 113 
Keble, John, 8, 14, 28, 38, 42, 43, 

54, 73, 114 

Kipling, Rudyard, 9, 17, 18, 51, 54 
Konrad of Wurzburg, 90 
Koran, The, 78, 87, 90 

Lamb, Charles, 47, 58, 114 
Landor, Walter Savage, 38 
Lang, Andrew, 19, 20 
Langhorne, John, 32, 35, 44, 57, 59, 

71, 72, 90, 114 
Lewis, Matthew Gregory, 53, 114 
Leyden, John, 115 
Lillo, George, 58, 70, 93, 115 
Lloyd, Robert, 14, 42, 75, 115 
Lockhart, John Gibson, 115 
Logan, John, 21, 63, 116 
Lovibond, Edward, 57, 63, 116 
Lyly, John, 11 

Lyttelton, George, 32, 84, 116 
Lytton, Bulwer, 13 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 36, 

65, 75, 83, 116 
Mackay, Charles, 19 
Mackintosh, Sir James, 66, 83 
Maclean, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, 

62, 116 
Macpherson, James, 21 
Madame Butterfly, 20 
Maginn, William, 116 
Malcolm, Sir John, 16 
Mallet, David, 44, 116 
Mangan, James Clarence, 13, 23, 

29, 31, 34, 36, 49, 50, 51, 53, 59, 

117 
Marlowe, Christopher, 11, 16 
Marshman, Josuha, 53 
Mason, William, 37, 48, 71, 117 
Mickle, William Julius, 25, 32, 35, 

36, 67, 117 



INDEX 



HI 



Miller, James, 11, 52, 117 
Milman, Henry Hart, 74, 117 
Milton, John, 10, 11, 34, 77, 79 
Mitford, Mary Russell, 53, 118 
Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 12, 

13, 53, 54, 62, 77, 118 
Montgomery, James, 21, 25, 33, 34, 

36, 38, 42, 44, 46, 49, 54, 65, 70, 

71, 72, 73, 74, 77, 82, 84, 118 
Moore, Edward, 119 
Moore, Thomas, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 

25, 28, 29, 31, 35, 36, 39, 40, 50, 

54, 57, 59, 62, 72, 73, 75, 76, 79, 

81, 83, 86, 119 
More, Paul Elmer, 14, 88 
Motherwell, William, 21, 30, 32, 

120 

Nairne, Caroline Oliphant, Lady, 

120 
Newman, John Henry, Cardinal, 

43, 120 
Nordau, Max, 34 

Omar Khayyam, 18, 20 

Peacock, Thomas Love, 28, 32, 39, 

45, 59, 120 
Pearl, The, 10 
Peele, George, 11 
Persian Tales, 60 
Petrarch, 39 

Phelps, William Lyon, 12, 41 
Pindar, 50 

Play of the Sacrament, The, 9 
Pollock, Robert, 32, 44, 57, 120 
Pope, Alexander, 12, 13 
Praed, Winthrop Mackworth, 22, 

29, 32, 42, 43, 58, 63, 64, 88, 91, 

121 
Preston, Thomas, 10 
Pringle, Thomas, 121 
Procter, Bryan Waller, 42, 49, 93, 

121 
Radcliffe, Ann, 32, 54, 121 
Ramayuna, The, 41, 101 
Reynolds, John Hamilton, 122 



Rogers, Samuel, 38, 44, 46, 61, 67, 

122 
Rolliad, The, 83 
Rose, William Stewart, 122 
Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 19, 31, 34, 

78 
Ruskin, John, 89 

Saadi, 20, 27, 78 

Sackville, Thomas, and Thomas 

Norton, 10 
St. Pierre, 71 
Scott, John, 23, 48, 54, 59, 63, 64, 

77, 122 
Scott, Sir Walter, 26, 54, 58, 65, 67, 

75, 76, 79, 122 
Shakespeare, William, 10, 16 
Shearmen and Taylors, Coventry, 9 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 12, 16, 25, 
26, 27, 28, 32, 35, 38, 42, 49, 51, 
52, 57, 63, 71, 73, 80, 86, 123 . 
Shenstone, William, 35, 49, 123 
Skeat, Walter W., 25, 30, 136 
Smart, Christopher, 32, 124 
Smith, Horace, 55, 56, 83, 124 
Smollett, Tobias George, 16, 34, 44 
Southey, Robert, 13, 16, 17, 18, 21, 
22, 23, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 36, 
37, 42, 51, 54, 55, 57, 60, 64, 72, 
73, 76, 80, 83, 86, 89, 91, 102, 124 
Spencer, Edmund, 11, 43 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 29 
Surrey, Earl of, 10, 11, 51 

Tagore, Rabindranath, 20 
Tasso, Torquato, 18, 35, 49, 66 
Tennyson, Alfred, Lord, 13, 17, 18, 

19,31,36, 60,91 
Thompson, William, 34, 43, 125 
Thomson, James (1700-1748), 26, 

32, 35, 36, 43, 46, 49, 84, 125 
Thomson, James (1834-1882), 19 
Tobin, John, 125 
TuUey, Richard Walton, 20 

Udall, Nicholas, 10 
Underbill, John Garrett, 10 



1J^2 



INDEX 



Vedas, The, 78 
Voltaire, 52, 117 

Waller, Edmund, 11, 12, 34 

Walpole, Horace, 125 

Warton, Joseph, 44, 46, 126 

Warton, Thomas, 126 

Webster's New International Dic- 
tionary, 25, 136 

Wells, Charles Jeremiah, 8, 47, 52, 
73, 126 

West, Gilbert, 126 

White, Henry Kirke, 71 86, 87, 93, 
126 



White, Gilbert, 63 
Whitehead, Paul, 63, 127 
Whitehead, William, 127 
Whitman, Walt, 45 
Wilkie, William, 32, 127 
Wilkins, Sir Charles, 53, 127 
Wilson, John, 42, 58, 65, 127 
Wolcott, John, 81, 83, 127 
Wordsworth, William, 12, 19, 38, 

47, 58, 60, 61, 65, 66, 67, 72, 76, 

79, 127 

Young, Edward, 13, 15, 44, 52, 56, 
57, 79, 88, 128 



I 



LIBRftRY OF CONGRESS 



002 566 128 P ^ 
wSv OF CONGRESS J 





